Wall Street Journal John Fund Monday, October 10, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
I have changed my mind about Harriet Miers. Last Thursday, I wrote in OpinionJournal’s Political Diary that “while skepticism of Ms. Miers is justified, the time is fast approaching when such expressions should be muted until the Senate hearings begin. At that point, Ms. Miers will finally be able to speak for herself.”
But that was before I interviewed more than a dozen of her friends and colleagues along with political players in Texas. I came away convinced that questions about Ms. Miers should be raised now–and loudly–because she has spent her entire life avoiding giving a clear picture of herself. “She is unrevealing to the point that it’s an obsession,” says one of her close colleagues at her law firm.
White House aides who have worked with her for five years report she zealously advocated the president’s views, but never gave any hint of her own. Indeed, when the Dallas Morning News once asked Ms. Miers to finish the sentence, “Behind my back, people say . . .,” she responded, “. . . they can’t figure me out.”
Lol…
Sorry, how’bout u read the “About” page?
Ha, ha.
My “inside baseball” take is that the Miers nomination relects the absence of Karl Rove from the selection process for Sandra Day O’Connor’s replacement, due to Mr. Rove’s more frequent business with the special prosecutor Fitzgerald’s grand jury investigating the Valerie Plame affair.
If there have been one consistent theme stressed by Mr. Rove it is that President Bush should avoid alienating his conservative base at all costs. This after all was the takeaway lesson for Republicans from the defeat of George Bush Sr. to Bill Clinton in 1992. Karl Rove would not have risked angering the President’s base during a time when the president’s approval ratings were falling.
Politically, this is an especially dangerous time for Mr. Bush to alienate his base. Mr Bush’s approval ratings have dropped to historic lows in response to a number of events, including rising energy prices, the federal government’s poor performance after Hurricane Katrina, and the ongoing violence and failure to achieve a positive outcome in Iraq. Soon the Medicare program will begin it’s new and extremely complicated drug benefit, and if this ends up disrupting care for million of seniors this could pushing Mr. Bush’s ratings down further.
Lastly, there is the possibility that the Fitzgerald grand jury could indict a number of high level Bush administration officials for conspiracy to discredit opponents of the Iraq war. Sucah an indictment would reinforce the growing consensus that the Bush administration provided a false rationale for an unnecessary war that cost a half a trillion dollars and 2,000 American lives.
The letter laid out his [al-Zawahiri] long-term plan: expel the Americans from Iraq, establish an Islamic authority and take the war to Iraq’s secular neighbors, including Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
The final stage, al-Zawahiri wrote, would be a clash with Israel, which he said was established to challenge “any new Islamic entity.”
Terrorist’s plan for the War
From here
Rdr Christopher – You misrepresent and create a false picture by placing events in incorrect sequence. I find your attempt to defend the greatest geopolitical blunder in American history a perfect example of the dim-witted stupidity and self-deception that in bringing down our nation. As such your argument is worthy of a full deconstruction.
Before we attacked Iraq there was no Al Qaeda presence in that country except in a small corner of Kurdistan outside of Saddam Hussein’s control. Ironically we could have taken out Zarqari at that point, but chose not to. It was well known that Osama Bin Ladin and Saddam Hussein hated each other; Ossama denoused Saddam as an accursed secularist, while Hussein would have certainly regarded an Islamic extremist organization within Iraq as a threat, not as an ally.
After we invaded Iraq and attempted to occupy that country with far too small a force to provide adequete security to it’s people or adequetly enforce government authority – then at that point – Al Qaeda was able to gain a foothold in Iraq. Zwahiri’s letter to Zarqari, was written AFTER the American invasion and reflects his views on how to take advantage of the chaos of the American occupation. It does not provide a pretext for the 2003 invasion, unless you are following the circular logic that we had to invade to stop something that happened because we invaded.
George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld are responsible for the presence of Al Qaeda in Iraq, not Saddam Hussein. If had not invaded Iraq, there would be no Al Qaeda presence in that country, the inspectors would have finished their job and we would have discovered that there were no weapons of mass destruction so it would have been easier to contain and deter Saddam Hussein, the United States would not have wasted a half a trillion dollars that it had to borrow from overseas lenders, and 2,000 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis would still be alive today.
I find your analysis amusing, considering that all I did was cite what the enemy we are at war with had stated, both directly and by a synopsis reported in the media. Your quarrel is not with me, but with those that report the facts.
Read the letter; they admit they are behind Iraq, Chechnya, Bosnia et. al. All areas that the liberals claim are being defended by ‘freedom fighters’ and ‘rebels’. That’s bull, they are murderous thugs and terrorists, a reincarnation and continuation of the hordes that have swept the world for 1400 years. They are Islamic terrorists who are bent on the destruction of all who do not submit to them. I for one am glad that we are not sitting idle (as some would have us do) while we submit to them and their false god.
I messed up the link to the news report in #6.
Try this
Stability of the Mass Grave
From the horse’s mouth, a quote from Iraqi President Jalal Talibani
sources: http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/archives/001445.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1072-1818667,00.html
[begin quote]
An excellent article in the Times by Jalal Talabani, the President of Iraq, should put the appeaseniks to shame (if they had any):
‘The lesson of the ghastly drumbeat of terrorism, the rioting in Basra and the vile murder of the leadership of the Iraqi Anglican Church is that the battle of Iraq cannot be won by retreat or compromise, but by the vision and determination for which Britain is renowned. Above all, Britain owes no apology for delivering the enslaved people of Iraq from the hands of a callous tyranny.
â??The challenge is to show fortitude in the face of horror so that we can finish the job that began in 2003 of uprooting dictatorship and implanting a democratic government. Reforming Iraq, restoring a society distorted by fascism, was never going to be easy. The alternative â?? to pretend that sanctions were working and that Saddam Hussein was contained â?? was an illusion. As has now been established, the United Nations Oil-for-Food programme was corrupt in root and branch. Saddam manipulated Oil-for-Food to become his personal chequebook for a campaign of international bribery and a trough from which his psychopathic progeny supped. Saddamâ??s regime openly declared in August 2001 that the sanctions had collapsed. Indeed, in 2003, as Saddam proclaimed his innocence to the world, his envoys were in Syria to negotiate the purchase of North Korean long-range missiles.
‘The Baathist regime, guilty of aggression and genocide, was overturned because Britain and the United States had courageously enforced the UN Security Council resolutions that others would barely support with words. Today the painstaking effort to enable Iraqis to express their views freely is also grounded in international legality. Foreign troops are in Iraq on the basis of a Security Council resolution, just as Iraq was liberated through the enforcement of 17 such resolutions that Saddam chose to flout.
â??Those who preferred the stability of the mass grave to liberation, and who raised their voices to save Saddam, but not his victims, have spuriously claimed that the war was fought to discover stocks of weapons of mass destruction. But Rolf Ekeus, the first head of the UN weapons inspectors, has argued that stocks were not the issue. Saddam could always re-create his stocks and until the end he could restart mustard gas production within months and nerve gas production within a couple of years. Moreover, Saddam used chemical weapons casually, gassing 5,000 Kurdish civilians at Halabja in 1988 and then using chemical bombs against Shia Arab civilians in 1991 â?? after the Gulf War ceasefire.'[end quote]
Melanie Phillips comments
It comes as a shock to read in a British newspaper such a factual account of recent history and a simple assertion of the need to protect the world from such an obvious threat that Saddam Hussein actually posed to us all. The fact that this has been written by the President of the very country which has thus been liberated will, nevertheless, still cut no ice at all with what has become mainstream opinion. Such are the depths of the madness to which we have descended here.
Missourian comments: The jihadi war against the West began in 1979 and our supine failure to react allowed the cancer to grow, fester and implant itself all over the world. For today’s Islamic atrocity see http://www.thereligionofpeace.com.
Cold Hearted Corporations
Dean, I hope you are going to go after the NYT, it is laying off 500 workers!!! Get after them!!!
Rdr.Christopher: Again you offer the circular logic that we had to invade Iraq to combat a threat that developed because of our invasion of Iraq.
Nothing in the letter provides supports the reasons for going to war offered by the Bush administration prior to the 2003 invasion, or refute the assertion that the Bush administration lied about the causus belli for war. A recent poll found that fifty percent of Americans believe lying about the reasons for going to war is grounds for impeachment.
The letter addresses conditions after the 2003 invasion. Al Qaeda was always a threat, but they were much LESS of a threat before we invaded Iraq. The invasion of Iraq has created ill will in the Islamic world against America that Al Qaeda has been able to use to its’s advantage as a propaganda and recruitment tool. The occupation of Iraq has provided a training ground for new terrorists and tactics, and an opportunity for our enemies to drag the United States into a in a never-ending quagmire and drain us of blood and treasure.
The military approach to combatting Al Qaeda was always fundamentally flawed. Bombing villages and killing civilians creates ill will against the United States, while working closely with existing regimes and their intelligence services using traditional police, detective, survellience, and special operations tactics has always been much more successful.
The threat, Islam, has been with us for 1400 years. Freeing Iraq from a murderous dictator did not cause Muslims to attack the West or the rest of the free world, that has been going on since their false prophet walked the earth.
Dean wrote: “The military approach to combatting Al Qaeda was always fundamentally flawed. Bombing villages and killing civilians creates ill will against the United States, while working closely with existing regimes and their intelligence services using traditional police, detective, survellience, and special operations tactics has always been much more successful.”
As a veteran I find your statements insulting. The U.S. military does not intentionally target civilians nor does it indicrimately bomb villages. To suggest that this is common practice is only to regurgitate leftist propaganda.
And you statement that Al-Qaeda wasn’t a major threat until after the Iraqi invasion is to ignore what happened on 9/11, or to the USS Cole, or Khobar towers , or the U.S. African Embassies, or for that matter the first Trade Tower bombing in 93. Iraq didn’t create Al-Qaeda, hatred of the west for centuries created this terrorist group.
Dean’s Note 10: The Parallel Universe
JBL, Dean lives in a different universe. In ours, it was Saddam Hussein who had the burden of proof under the U.N. Sanction scheme to prove that he had destroyed the weapons that he had previously declared. To Dean, the United States had to prove the existence of “stockpiles.” To you and I, it is obvious that the delays that Saddam BOUGHT and paid for at the United Nations allowed him to dismantle, hide and export many of his weapons. Today’s news includes the FACT that the former French ambassodor to the United Nations has been indicted by France for accepting bribes from Saddam. Dean’s parallel universe see the United Nations as an agent of good, instead of a corrupt collection of thugocracies “unequally yoked” with the few true democracies in the world. But, I digress.
Dean writes: The military approach to combatting Al Qaeda was always fundamentally flawed. Bombing villages and killing civilians creates ill will against the United States, while working closely with existing regimes and their intelligence services using traditional police, detective, survellience, and special operations tactics has always been much more successful.
Parallel universes rises its wobbly head here again: Dean, please note that millions of Iraqis braved death in January to vote for the legislative body that would write their constitution. This means that Iraqis ARE SUPPORTING the efforts of the United States government to help Iraqis form their own government. If Iraqis did not think the newly minted Iraqi government was representative of them, or could be representative of them, they would not have RISKED THEIR LIVES TO VOTE.
Secondly, since our military reports (but the media does not transmit) that a high percentage of the local population SUPPORTS the new Iraqi army and new Iraqi police by providing intelligence on the location and identity of the death squads from Iran, Syria and Saudia Arabia.
Thirdly, the recent letter from the old terrorist to the new, ADMITS that the terrorist tactic of killing civilian Iraqis randomly is BACKFIRING and undermining any remaining Iraqi support.
Dean’s Parallel Universe
In Note 10 Dean suggests that U.S. military war crimes have created “ill-will” among Iraqi citizens. However, we have objective proof to the contrary. Millions of Iraqi citizens risked their lives to go to the polls in January of 2005 to elect a legislature to write the constitution. If the average Iraqi bore the United States ill-will they would not have risked their lives to vote. It was Al-Quaeda that wanted people to stay home, it was the United States that wanted people to go to vote.
Today, you can find quite a few Iraqi blogs in English that support the fact that the Iraqi people have taken the constitutional debate and elections VERY SERIOUSLY. Iraqis have hundreds of newspapers, they have radio shows and TV shows in which public policy is discussed openly, something they have not been able to do in decades without risking certain death at the hands of Saddam. The Iraqis are subjected to random violence BY AL-Quaeda not the United States. In a few days, Iraqis will probably risk their lives in large numbers and vote to approve their first constitution. A constitution that was created by passionate negotiations among various groups in Iraqi society. It wasn’t easy but it was done with compromise and negotiation not guns and bombs. The resulting constitution may not be something that I would want for my own country, but, I am not an Iraqi and the constitution provides mechanisms for future change.
Quite to the contrary, the recent letter from the old terrorist to the new terrorist points out that the terrorists public beheadings of innocent people are creating ILL-WILL. So Dean get it exaactly WRONG. It is Al-AQUAEDA which is creating ill-will, not the United States.
This kind of difference in the view of the FACTS can only be described as a parallel universe, as opposed to a difference in interpretation of agreed upon facts.
For the record, there are any number of Bush domestic polices that I disagree with, however, on Iraq, I consider our actions necessary.
.
JBL and Rdr Christopher,
You are both talking past Dean. I don’t see eye-to-eye with Dean on, well, a ton of stuff. But as a life-long Republican, and a Marine Corps veteran, I have come to the same conclusion that Dean has. By a different route, to be sure.
First of all, I agree with both of you. Islam is the problem. In fact, it is a huge problem. Now, if radical Islam is the problem – how does one fight that enemy? Well, one way is to foster and support secular regimes. Like Ba’athist Iraq, which is why we backed Saddam versus Iran. Iran was the bigger threat, so we ensured that they would be unable to take down the Saddam regime, and use the Shi’ite majority to create an Islamic superstate. This is just another example of Reaganite brilliance.
Well, we took care of that for them, didn’t we? Now the Shi’ite radicals, such as the current Prime Minister, merely have to vote for a government that will be allied with Iran in the goal of fostering greater adherence to the Sharia.
Look, if Islam is the problem how is that problem going to be solved by letting Muslims vote? According to Bush and Condi, Democracy is the solution to all the ills of the region. If only Muslims can vote in governments of their choice, terrorism will cease.
This is stupid. You know this. Both of you are suffering from the same cognitive dissonance that is affecting most of the right-wing in this country. It is not enough to simply ‘do something.’ We need to do the right thing. If Islam is the problem, how does what we are doing in Iraq help solve that problem? Are the Iraqis going to stop being Muslim? Especially when the government is answerable to Al-Sistani?
I agree, let’s take action against aggressive Islamic expansionism around the world. That means dropping support of Turkey’s entry into the EU. That means closing our borders. That means giving Kosovo back to Serbia. That means finding a secular former Ba’athist to run Iraq, instead of handing it over to the Muslim fanatics who are likely to win the next election. We supported a military coup in Algeria to stop a Muslim fundamentalist state from being born, we need to ensure the same outcome in Iraq. That can not be done by democratic means.
Muslim fanatics can not overthrow authoritarian regimes in the Muslim world. The Muslim Brotherhood can not defeat the Assad regime in Syrian. The Muslim brotherhood can also not bring down Muburak in Egypt. Same thing applies in Jordan, and elsewhere. In fact, the only chance the Muslim fanatics have of taking power, is if the U.S. brings down the regimes for them, and then lets the ‘Arab street’ vote.
That is not a good idea. Al Queda may claim, as it’s aim, that it wants to bring back the Arab Caliphate. It can’t, anymore than I can wish myself a billion dollars. Without our help, they will be a bunch of Jihadi nuts blowing stuff up.
Also, as a Marine, I beg to differ about the U.S. military intentionally targeting civilian areas. Of course we do. I would have called down fire on a civilian area in a heartbeat if I were taking sustained fire from such areas. Would you rather get Marines killed sweeping and clearing room to room, or would you rather save U.S. casualties and run the risk of dead Iraqi children? The choice is quite clear, in my mind, and I doubt I am the only Marine to think this way. Civilians get plastered inside war zones. If you can’t face that fact, then you shouldn’t back the war.
The primary threat from Muslims isn’t even terror at this point. The major threat is immigration to Europe and the United States. By coming in large numbers, they will swamp our political systems and use the ballot box to overturn our entire societies. Just as they will use the ballot box in Iraq to bring you the Sharia, so will they bring it to Detroit. What has Bush done about this?
Nothing, besides proclaiming Islam a religion of peace and having Ramadan in the White House. Just because Ted Kennedy doesn’t like the war in Iraq doesn’t make it a good idea.
Glen,
Lot’s of good points.
I am furious that Bush et. al. calls Islam a religion of peace. He needs to cut the PCBS and tell us why we are at war, the real reason, and that is that Islam is our enemy, it is a religion of terror and needs to be stopped, now. I also have thought about the issues about allowing Islam the power of democracy, both abroad and here, and I find the possibilities troubling as you do.
Sometimes it is necessary for the military to target civilians (though I don’t think it is being done in Iraq) because in the greater picture more lives will be saved. (c.f. the end of WWII vs. Japan) As a nitpick, once you are taking fire from a ‘civilian’ area, it is IMO, no longer civilian but military.
The real question is, as you alluded to, how do we stop Islam ??
Rdr. Christopher
Good points. I do remember watching reports from embedded reporters in the first three week drive from Basra to Baghdad. Those reporters documented efforts of U.S. personnel to get civilians out of the way when possible. The Baathists relied on our reluctance to just blast into a group of Iraqis quite a few times. If you remember evacuations were allowed before the second battle of Fallujah.
The political and cultural battle is key. Obviously, smart Islamists are not going to give us the opportunity to meet them on a battlefield, they know they would lose. However, they are very, very good at cultural attacks. The very cultural elites which traditionally were relied upon by a society to defend that society’s mores and propagate those societies mores have joined the enemy, quite literally. American Universities and colleges are intensely anti-American.
Multi-culturalism is a campaign designed to defeat us psychologically, to convince us that our culture is not worth defending.
In my opinion, we really need an anti-jihadi group backed with generous funds that can field lawyers and lobbyists. We need to bring suit against government funded entities that cave into Muslim demands for special treatment. We need to organize alumni in every college and university we can to work for reform of the professorship and to resist the further expansion of the anti-American curriculum in the liberal arts and elsewhere. I have argued for a flat ban on Muslim immigration. I will grant you that there are ways that the ban can be gamed, but, better a ban than nothing at at all.
Bush’s recent speech did a very good thing in finally identifying our enemy as Islamic fascism, also known as Islam.
Glen
Your comments are not without merit, however, we, the United States, are in there now, for better or worse. As risky and shaky as it is, we can’t turn back now. We have to try to make Iraq work. An country with an Islamic population is acceptable IF that country does not harbor or sponsor terror. I don’t care how they govern themselves, democracy would be nice, as long as they don’t harbor or sponsor terror.
Bush recently appointed someone to the position of top lawyer for ICE, immigration and customs enforcement. This is a very important post. We needed someone devoted to protecting the border and stopping the bad guys. Well, we got someone with lobbying experience for the association of islamic banks. As a topper to that,we have invited the whole of Mexico into New Orleans to get the $15 to $17 jobs that “Americans just won’t take” in construction.
Visualize me beating my head against the keyboard.
Rdr. Christopher suggests that Bush “needs to cut the PCBS and tell us … that Islam is our enemy”. Yes, that would be smart indeed. Alienate not just radical Muslims but moderate and liberal ones as well. Why not just call them a bunch of dirty, stinky ragheads while he’s at it?
I’m no fan of radical Islam. It feeds fanaticism and violence. There are, however, liberal and moderate Muslims who share with their more conservative counterparts maybe the fact that they pray facing Mecca (or wherever it is) along with some other more superficial elements. Think of how little commonality there is between those who fall under the banner of “Christianity”: I’m always hearing on this site how little the faith of those in the NCC is like that of Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism, not to mention more way-out sects like the Branch Davidians (yes, they’re “Christian”, too). Likewise, if you recall, Shiite Muslims are being killed by their more radical Muslim counterparts.
Think a little more clearly about the consequences of your suggestion. Bush is smarter than that.
The difference is James, that Islam is rank heresy, and is from the evil one, it has no basis in truth but is spawned from the author of lies. At least the RCC and some of the Protestant sects have a measure of orthodoxy. I also fail to see how Branch Davidians are Christian, that is, if they were following their ‘messiah’ they had since left the faith, what little they had to start with. Muslims directly deny our Lord and Saviour.
Those who are not with Him are against Him.
Rdr. Christopher: Islam is heresy .. okay. Maybe much of it is. So is Judaism. They’ve denied the Messiah. So is Buddhism. So is Hinduism. Actually, maybe some sects of Christianity are, too. Do we need to re-launch the Crusades and exterminate the practitioners of these heretical faiths? I’m uncertain of what your point is.
Yes, there are violent practitioners of Islam. It’s prominent in that faith, I will admit. However, I believe Eric Rudolph murdered a few dozen people in the United States, and he was an evangelical Christian.
I don’t understand religious fanaticism of any kind, whatever the “brand”. The concept of murdering someone because they don’t conceptualize God the same way you do churns my stomach, to be honest.
I’m not saying we can’t defend ourselves against a sect of violent adherents to a murderous brand of theology (or whatever it is). I’m simply suggesting that labeling the enemy as any follower of Islam is far too simplistic, and it will only lead to the same errors that we are condemning.
Tired Old Equivalency Argument:
JamesK. This is a very tired old equivalency argument.
Mohammed EXPRESSLY TAUGHT the the “way to God” was under the sword. He expressly divided the world in to the realms of war and the realms of peace. He left very explicit instructions of how to wage war and how to treat non-Muslims in conquered areas. We have 1400 years of history to look at. Islam has alway been an imperialistic and totalitarian politico-religious system. Violent jihad, either direct or indirect, is the express duty of every Muslim. Muslims who do not directly support jihad for the expansion of Islam are required to support it by contributing money. Do you understand how many Islamic “charities” we have operating in the U.S? Quite a few, JamesK. Are you aware that Freedom House collected anti-American and anti-Christian hate literature published in Saudi Arabia from thousands of AMERICAN MOSQUES. You do understand the Steve Emerson found jihadis operating openly inside the United States with absolutely no restraints on their recruitment and fund raising efforts.
The Twin Towers were destroyed in the name of Islam and nothing else, JamesK. Nothing else. They were destroyed at the direction of Osama Ben Laden, who openly stated that he was conducting jihad to re-create the caliphate.
You really need to do some reading on this. First, some guidelines when discussing Christianity and Islam:
Compare theology with theology: The Islamic exemplar is Mohammed. The Christian examplar is Christ. Mohammed was a warlord who directly killed, assassinated, raped and tortured. He is held to be beyond criticism by Muslims who consider him to the person who pleased God the most.
There is no comparison of the examples set by Christ and Mohammed.
Compare relevant time period with relevant time period. Compare medieval Christianity with medieval Islam. Comparie modern Islam with modern Christianity. Islam is the official religion of over 20 countries, most of them found in the Organization of Islamic States. You can observe Islamic societies today. You woulnd not find them livable. Islam has not changed its core teachings since the medieval ages, it has just lost the political strength to enforce them.
Recognize that there are Islamic theocracies but no true Christian theocracy. Although the United States is primarily Christian culturally, it is not a Christian society in the same sense that Saudi Arabia is an Islamic society.
Mohammed EXPRESSLY TAUGHT the the “way to God” was under the sword. He expressly divided the world in to the realms of war and the realms of peace. He left very explicit instructions of how to wage war and how to treat non-Muslims in conquered areas. We have 1400 years of history to look at. Islam has alway been an imperialistic and totalitarian politico-religious system. Violent jihad, either direct or indirect, is the express duty of every Muslim.
The Twin Towers were destroyed in the name of Islam and nothing else, JamesK. Nothing else. They were destroyed at the direction of Osama Ben Laden, who openly stated that he was conducting jihad to re-create the caliphate.
JamsK No comparsion between Judaism and Islam
Although Jews and Christians differ on the status of Christ, admittedly a very big difference, Christians HONOR the holy writings of the Jews. Jews call their Holy Scriptures, the Torah, we call it the Old Testament (although the Torah and the Old Testament are not precisely co-terminous). Much of the teachings on personal ethics is similar or the same in Judaism and Christianity. That is not true for Islam and Christianity. Islam does not teach to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” There is no Golden Rule in Islam. Muslims are allowed to lie to non-Muslims, taquiyya and kitman, if it will advance the Ummah, or the collection of world-wide Islam.
Muslims not only deny the divinity of Christ, they hold the Hebrew Scriptures (the Christian Old Testament) and our New Testament in dishonor. They teach that the existing versions of the Old and New Testament as honored by Christians and Jews were intentionally falsified and therefore the entire book is considered blasphemous.
If you would like to see a modern English translation of a recognized summary of Sunni Islamic law buy a copy of the Reliance of the Traveler. You will see jihad set out in all its glory JamesK. They don’t even try to hide it.
Muslims are currently attacking Indonesia, Thailand, Malaya, the Phillipines, all over the Middle East, Spain, England, Morrocco, Nigeria, Kenya, Somalia and many more places.
First of all, who is advocating murdering them? I would be perfectly happy to not be occupying Iraq at this time. Nor would I like to be occupying any other Arab nation, either. Defeating Islam as a challenge to our culture and society does not require the ‘Final Solution to the Arab Question.’
Ba’athism, for example, was a very real challenge to Islam. It sought to replace Islam with secular socialism as a unifying force in society. It was a flawed ideal, to be sure, as all socialist schemes are. However, it did manage to spawn two of the most secular societies in the Middle East. The Ba’athists offered a competing vision to that of Islam, and were able to drive progress on that basis. One of our primary problems is that we are offering a procedure, democracy, instead of a vision for a society.
The first step in defeating Islam is to cease to prop it up. Tell the Muslims the truth. You are poor and backwards because of your religious worldview. The next step is to stop, immediately, attempting to force pro-Western autocracies from creating democratic reforms. There are many, many reforms in civil society that would foster liberalization that do not require procedural democracy. Anglo-Saxon law didn’t spring up in a democratic environment. It was the grudging result of an evolutionary process. You can’t short circuit that. Lots of people talk about Japan, but it was a one party state until the 1990’s. The LIberal Democrats never lost. It was, in fact, more authoritarian than Democratic.
So we can push for economic reforms, liberalization, and a jettisoning of the Islamic Law which retards progress and punishes women. Those reforms are easiest to enact under authoritarian regimes. Democracy retards the process.
We can also quit attacking and occupying Muslim countries. That only feeds anger and resentment among the poor, and allows corrupt rulers to focus rage outwardly on a foreign aggressor – us.
We can limit the damage of Muslim immigration into Europe by opposing Turkish membership in the EU, and by encouraging European countries to import labor from Latin America instead of North Africa. We can end immigration to the U.S. from Muslim countries. We can focus on getting rid of illegal immigrant Muslims that are here. We can close mosques whose pulpits are used by radicals.
We can also fully exploit our own energy resources and quit putting money in the hands of al-Queda by buying such expensive oil. Drill in Alaska today, and off the coast of Flordia – Jeb Bush’s environmental record be damned.
At the same time, we can push for greater liberties for Christians in Muslim countries. Since many Christians are better educated and more successful than their Muslim countrymen, many dictators have a tendency to embrace them anyway. After all, Christians have always run the Muslim empires for them. Just look at the Ottoman use of Greeks in law and finance.
In those areas such as Sudan and Nigeria in which no compromise is possible, we can arm the Christins and provide military assistance. Christians willing to fight to free themselves from Muslim rule deserve our aid. Period. That includes pulling our troops out of the Balkans and letting the Serbs have their province back.
Islam is the backward religion of a backward group of people. They exploited the exhaustion of the Byzantine and Persian Empires to conquer the richest cities in the world, whose people they exploited and whose cultural achievements they appropriated. Islam can never, ever really threaten us unless we ourselves commit suicide. We have a lot of other options besides that.
This is what trying to co-exist with Muslims would be like
Segregation of the sexes in public places
Changes in medical examinations to shield women from the sight of male physicians
Modesty requirements which would virtually eliminate all women’s sports
Modesty requirements which would eliminate ballet and modern dance
Rules against the depiction of humans and animals that would empty every museum
Censorship of the arts and literature to prevent “insults to the Prophet” or “insults to Islam.”
Restriction on social life which involves mixing of the sexes, such as dancing
Elimination of pork form the diet
The elimination of literature, poems, stories involving pigs, such as fairy tales and Winnie the Pooh
Prohibiting the ownership of dogs for pets, allowing them only as work animals
Prohibition of interest on loans
Prohibition of insurance as a form of gambling
Probhibtion of gambling, good by Los Vegas (can’t say I would miss LV, but some people like it)
The restriction of the value of women’s testimony in court
The restriction of women’s inheritance to half that of men
The restriction of women’s freedom to travel without a male relative.
Legal lenience for honor killings
Legal wife beating
Legal polygamy
Female genital mutilation
The legalization and encouragement of first cousin marriages and child brides.
The prohibition on Muslims serving in a subordinate position to non-Muslims
The prohibition of marriage between Muslim women and non-Muslim men.
The prohibition of a woman serving as head of state.
Public accommodation to month-long fasts in Ramadan
Restriction on women’s freedom whenever an activity was not possible with restrictive clothing requirements
Restriction on women’s freedom whenever an activity involved close contact with non family member males
The public broadcast of loud calls to prayer five times a day, Something Christian residents of Hamtranck, MI have
to live with or move away from.
We have no duty to let new Muslims into our country and we have every reason to stop the flow.
All of these rules are in force today in Islamic societies.
Missourian: I’m simply suggesting that we distinguish between Islamic ideology and those who adhere to it in only superficial ways but label themselves as Muslim nonetheless. There’s a difference. Otherwise, you will find no support for that culture from me.
What you seem to do frequently is transpose your views of ideology onto those who purportedly adhere to that ideology. Islam is evil, therefore, self-described “Muslims” are as well. It doesn’t quite work this way, however. Many Muslims do not adhere to every tenet of Islam. They reject male domination, jihad and the fanatical hatred of the States in both practice and in theory (whether their religion considers them “wrong” or not). Why is it impossible for you to recognize any existence of behavioral and ideological nuance within groups? Is everyone just one big stereotype? It’s as simple minded as saying that all “Christians” are gun-toting, abortion-clinic-bombing, tongue-speaking, snake-handling yahoos (just because some, in fact, are).
I don’t think I’m being PC, either. I support the idea that we wean ourselves off of Arab oil through the use of the both domestic drilling AND more importantly, providing alternative fuels. The human rights record of Saudi Arabia is appalling, yet we are silent about it because we know our economy depends a great deal on their resources.
Indeed !
Just today the AP reports on Islamic Attacks in Southern Russia
References to authoritative documents is not “stereotyping”
JamesK, your observation in Note 28 boils down to the idea that there are some people who call themselves “Muslim” who do not ascribe to the central tenets of Islam. Given that there are 1.2 billion people who may be described as at least, culturally Muslim, this is hardly a novel or particularly helpful observation.
Once again, you are theorizing in a vacuum. You accuse me of “stereotyping.” I am not stereotyping when I refer to the actual guiding documents which Muslims consider authoriatative.
Here is the solid, documentary and historical evidence of what Islam is. First, Islam can be “nailed down.” It does consist of a PARTICULAR SET of concepts. How do I know this? From Islamic history. In the 11th century, the reigning Caliph (leader of the ummah) directed his clerics to CODIFY ISLAM. This means that the Caliph wanted his religious establishment to produce a written ORTHODOXY in Sunni Islam. At this point the “door of interpretation” were closed. This means that there exists a given set of idea of Sunni Islam which may be considered “classical” Islam.
Where would you find a summary of classical Islam? Well, you could refer to publications of what is considered the leading Sunni theological university in Cairo, Egypt. It is called
Al-Hazar and it publishes a book called “The Reliance of the Traveler.” Despite the rather odd name, this book is a summry of Sunni teachings on major topics.
So, Islam is not a cloud of vague ideas, quite the contrary, it is a collection of some very, very concrete ideas and very specific teachings and rules. Once again, JamesK, you are tackling a topic without the SLIGHTEST REFERENCE to the actual DISPOSITIVE documents and literature.
In sum, you have no right to accuse me of “stereotyping” when I am reporting from authoritative versions of the Islamic theology recognized by Muslims all over the world.
Note 28 Wife Beating and the Koran
JamesK, you do know that the Koran in section 4:34 authorizes and directs men to govern women, and to beat them.
Do you consider quoting from the Koran “stereotyping?”
Do you understand that Muslims consider the Koran to be the word of God dictated to Mohammed by the an angel? Do you understand that this verse allows for no interpretation and that every Muslim alive on this planet considers wife beating a Koranic privilege?
If you accuse me of “stereotyping” may I enquire where you are getting YOUR knowledge of Islam?
In previous posts, you charged off to give opinions about whether the government has the power to put surveillance cameras in private homes, YET, you apparently had NO IDEA that the Fourth Amendment would apply to such a situation. Again, what is YOUR AUTHORITY on Islam, I have identified mine and I can supply more. What is your authority?
Note 28 Islamic Reformers and Useful Idiots
From time to time, you will encounter a book published in the WEST by a Muslim women LIVING IN THE WEST who wants to reform Islam. She wants to “square the circle.” She wants to keep her Islamic culture and tradition but she would like to leave behind the wife-beating, honor killing, polygamy and female genital mutilation. So, she writes a book that states that 1400 years of Islamic scholarship and the Al-Hazar University at Cairo are wrong and have been wrong all along. Sure. A few academic types in the West read the book and declare that “Lo, the Islamic reformation has begun.” The book is promptly forgotten. It gathers dust on library shelves in western universities. In the meantime, Islamists tighten their grip on Islamic societies and sponsor terror elsewhere.
You should read Taslima Nasrin. Ms. Nasrin is a physician, a secularist who currently lives in HIDING in Switzerland. She is Bangladeshi by birth and she wrote a book describing what it was like to grow up female in Pakistan. She has a fatwa on her head and lives in fear. She is trying to tell a West that does not want to hear, that Sharia law IS mainstream Islam and that most Muslims all over the world believe sincerely in Sharia law. Those who do not support Sharia law are renegades and “reformers” with no real power in the Islamic world.
Again, JamesK, where are your authorities? You wrote about privacy issues without reference to the most important Constitutional provision which touches on those issues, the Fourth Amendment. Now you are writing with “authority” about Islam. Please identify your authorities which refute anything that I have declared about Islam in my posts.
Note 28 James
Stereotyping?
Query? Do you know what the Bukhari Hadith are? If so, tell me.
Do you know the significance of the Bukhari Hadith, if so, tell me.
Do you have a six-volume English translation of the Bukhari Hadith? No?, I do. I burned
over $100 on a set.
Now, tell me about stereotyping of Muslims.
My interests, Missourian, are in protecting the exceptions to the rule, and ensuring that they are justly treated. You have implied over and over again that you have zero interest in this approach, whatever the “group” happens to be.
This is how I feel about Islam: they’re about 400 years behind the times, and I think I can draw an analogy between modern-day Islam and Christianity in the Dark Ages. You do realize that we burned women to death … in this country … for being suspected witches. John Calvin recommended that Servetus be executed. His crime? Well, let’s say that “Servetus might have been saved by shifting the position of the adjective and confessing Christ as the Eternal Son rather than as the Son of the Eternal God” But he didn’t just want him to die, he wanted Servetus to go up in a pile of smoke in front of a gawking crowd. This man is now revered by hundreds of thousands of American Christians. Catholics slay Gaspard de Coligny, a Protestant leader. After murdering him, the Catholic mob mutilated his body, “cutting off his head, his hands, and his genitals… and then dumped him into the river […but] then, deciding that it was not worthy of being food for the fish, they hauled it out again [… and] dragged what was left … to the gallows of Montfaulcon, ‘to be meat and carrion for maggots and crows’.”
These aren’t rogue individuals: oftentimes they had full acceptance from the leadership of the Church of their day.
Islam WILL reform. I encourage its reform. You act as if I am promoting radical Islam. Once again: I agree with you about the dangers of it. But please, don’t act as if Christianity’s history is without moral blemish.
The question was not, “Does Islam pose a threat to the West that justifies our invasion of Iraq”. The question was whether the specific reasons for going to war offered by the Bush administration to Congress and the American people were truthful or deliberate lies.
The Bush administration never said “Let’s have a crusade against radical Islam.” It said that we needed to attack Iraq because (1) They participated in the September 11th attack, (2) They had weapons of mass destruction that posed an imminent threat to the United States and (3)it would be to our advantage to have a friendly democracy in the the heart of the middle-east.
We knew before the invasion that reason number one was blatantly false. We know now after the invasion that reason number two is false, and we could have confirmed that Iraq had no WMD if we had allowed the inspectors to finish their job. Lastly without reasons number one and two, we know reason number three would have been insufficient to compel the American people to support launching an expensive war and placing our servicemen and women in harm’s way.
The Valerie Plame affair indicates the lengths that the war-hawks in the Bush adminsitration were willing to go to intimidate those that questioned their false rationale for war. It is, in fact, only one of very many acts of intimidation by the the Bush administration directed at the war’s critics.
So bottom line – the Bush administration lied to Congress and the American people, knowingly, intentionally and systematically, to launch an unnecessary war which has turned out to be our nation’s costliest geopolitical blunder. That my fiends, is an impeachable offense.
Note 34:A professorial tone without the facts to back it up
What you have demonstrated JamesK,is that, once again, you have no factual basis for your comments.
Let’s take just one from Note 28:
It doesn’t quite work this way, however. Many Muslims do not adhere to every tenet of Islam. They reject male domination, jihad and the fanatical hatred of the States in both practice and in theory (whether their religion considers them “wrong” or not). Why is it impossible for you to recognize any existence of behavioral and ideological nuance within groups?
You have asserted that “many Muslims reject male domination.” This comment is unsupportable and it demonstrates your very real lack of knowledge of Islam’s core source documents. Again, Sura 4:34 clearly states that Allah made “men to excel women” or “gave men the advantage over women.” This is understood throughout the Muslim world as a declaration of male domination in all things. The Koran is considerred to be the direct, unalterable and unimpeachable word of God. No Muslim can reject any teaching of the Koran without risking charges of blasphemy and apostasy. Anyone challenging, even verbally, any teaching of the Koran in a Muslims country is subject to jail and punishment for questioning any aspect of the Koran or Mohammed’s teaching. One cannot BE an orthodox Muslim and reject male domination. It extends beyond Sura 4: 34 and contines with the Koranic passages authorizing wife beating, reduced inheritance rights, and reduced testimonial weight for women’s testimony in court.
One may be a “cultural Muslim” or a “lapsed Muslim” and reject male domination, but one may not be an orthodox Muslim. If you were truly informed about Islam, which you clearly are not, you would be aware of the reseach done by Freedom House which is being submitted to Congress this week. Their research shows that 80% of American mosques contain Saudi Arabian hate literature. This literature has not been ejected from those mosques by the so-called moderates and liberals that you hope exist. Several months ago a Muslim woman tried to walk to the front of an AMERICAN mosque and lead prayers. She was subjected to death threats from American Muslims. Sure, JamesK, we sure have a lot of moderate and liberal Muslims around.
You do realise that there was no Dark Ages in Orthodox Christianity. The crimes you speak of are not of the Church.
The problem you have, is that one cannot impeach based on speculation and leftist rhetoric. Until you, or anyone else shows that the Administration lied as you claim, and that the war was unnecessary, you have no case.
Note 28 Point, game, match
Handwaving with a Professorial Tone
JamesK, in note 28 you made an express claim that my description of important features of Islamic culture was “stereotyping.” I proceeded to provide references to source documents in Islam to support my assertions. I can produce more if you wish.It is clear that not only have you not read the source documents I referred to, you didn’t know they existed.
As we type, there are people in Iran who are being stoned for adultery, people in Saudi Arabia who are having hands amputated. Today, now, this century in countries with modern communication and ample wealth and education. This is Islam today.
Your comments on Islam remind me of your insightful comments on legal theory that were unfettered by any knowledge of the Constitution, but, still you trot out the professorial tone.
Point, game, match.
“Poll Finds Dimmer View of Iraq War: 52% Say U.S. Has Not Become Safer”, Wednesday, June 8, 2005; Page A01
“For the first time since the war in Iraq began, more than half of the American public believes the fight there has not made the United States safer, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
..Nearly three-quarters of Americans say the number of casualties in Iraq is unacceptable, while two-thirds say the U.S. military there is bogged down and nearly six in 10 say the war was not worth fighting — in all three cases matching or exceeding the highest levels of pessimism yet recorded. More than four in 10 believe the U.S. presence in Iraq is becoming analogous to the experience in Vietnam.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/07/AR2005060700296.html
Americans are finally waking up to the fact that they were lied to about the reasons for going to war in Iraq. The record clearly shows that Bush administration made comments about “imminent threats” posed by Iraq that it knew to be false or based on hearsay and unreliable sources.
That is why they retaliated against former ambassador Joe Wilson – because he revealed that he had travelled to Niger and investigated the reports of Uranium sales to Iraq and found them to be false BEFORE President Bush refered to them in the State of the Union address. The CIA specifically informed Condaleeza Rice and her assistant Stephen Hadley not to use that story before the speech.
But there are others incidents of lying.
– Bush claimed that Iraq had recontituted it’s nuclear program after the International Atomic Energy Agency under Nobel Peace prize winner Mohammed El-Barradei had reported that it had not.
– Bush claimed that Iraq had purchased aluminum tubes to make nuclear devices. This was disproven
– Bush claimed Iraq had develped mobile biological weapons labs. They truned out to be equipment for inflating ancient derigibles with helium.
– Bush claimed that the Iraqis had constructed unmanned aerial drones that could deliver biological weapons to America AFTER the US Air Force told them that they were little more than children’s toys.
– The Bush administration paid convicted embezzeler Ahmed Chalabi millions for intellegence that proved to be totally false and worthless, and used it to justify going to war.
As soon as special prosecutor Fitzgerald’s grand jury wraps up its business, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby will be frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs for their role in inventing these lies and using illegal means to punish those who challenged them. If there were any justice in the world there would be a new tribunal like the Nuremburg trials and Bush, Cheney, Ruumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice and Libby would all be sitting in the docket.
Note 37 Dean, Saddam Had the Burden of Proof
Under the terms of the 1991 ceasefire and the United Nations resolutions, Saddam had the burden of proof to show that he had destroyed the stocks of WMD that he, himself, had declared existed. After the close of the 1991 war, Saddam tabulated and submitted to the United States a long list of WMD. He proceeded to properly destroy and dispose of some of those stocks (you have to neutralize chemical weapson properly, not just “thrown them away.”) About the mid 1990’s he stopped co-operating and at one point he physically threw the inspectors out of Iraq.
Dean suggestion that we “allow the inspectors” to do their work, shows that he does not understand what the inspectors were supposed to do. They weren’t supposed to engage in a game of hide and seek where we were allowed to invade if Saddam got caught. They were there to supervise and oversee the destruction and dismantling of the WMD and confirm Saddam’s voluntary and open compliance.
I have explained that to Dean about 20 times but it doesn’t seem to take.
Side note. During the prelude to war, many on the Left pointed out that our European “allies” did not support our efforts in Iraq. Please note that the French ambassador to the United Nations has just been ARRESTED BY THE FRENCH for TAKING BRIBES FROM SADDAM. Hmm, maybe the French objection was based on some high level moral reasoning. Maybe they were ON THE TAKE FROM SADDAM.
Note 38, Dean, This Hurts Bush’s Bid for Third Term
We are within days of securing a constitution in Iraq. Again, it might not be the kind of constitution I would want to live under, but the people of Iraq seem to want a constitution of their own. I predict they will brave the bullets and explosions AGAIN to vote.
Dean, since you are so invested in “justice” I don’t see how you can fail to respond to the clear desire of the Iraqi people for self-determination and the dignity to run their own country. Would you really have us leave them to the tender mercies of the beheaders and the men who just shot those school teachers?
I understand the very real risks that Glen has pointed out, but, given that these people are willing to risk death to vote, don’t you think you can stand by them just a little bit longer?
Note 34 Protecting the Muslims “exceptions to the rule.”
Are you going to protect that female Muslim “exception to the rule” who tried to lead a prayer in an American mosque? Hope you have some law enforcement training, because she got death threats from American Muslims, who, apparently were not “exceptions to the rule.”
JamesK, the Muslim exceptions to the rule, the liberals, the moderates, the ones who reject male domination are quite safe in America. They are in SEVERE DANGER in the Islamic world. Americans are not arresting moderate Muslims in the United States for “insulting Islam” or “insulting the Prophet.” We are not stoning adulterers. They are doing so in Saudi Arabia and Iran. In Jordan they are letting “honor killers” off light.
No I would say that the “moderate Muslims” who reject the core teachings of Islam are quite safe here in the United States, with one exception, that is, from other Muslims.
Missourian: There’s no call to be arrogant and condescending, even though it’s apparently something you find enjoyable. This isn’t a courtroom.
You might find this resource informative. It’s called the “Progressive Muslim Union” and can be found here. You can go ahead and pretend it doesn’t exist, just like you do with any other fact that contradicts your iron-clad assumptions about the way the world operates, but here’s their policy statement, anyhow:
1) We affirm that a Muslim is anyone who identifies herself or himself as “Muslim,” including those whose identification is based on social commitments and cultural heritage.
2) We affirm the importance of celebrating the arts, culture, and the pursuit of joy in our daily lives. We believe the restrictions imposed by some on instrumental music and the depiction of human forms in paintings and sculpture contravene the rich Muslim cultural heritage from around the globe.
3) We affirm the validity of Islamic ritual and practice as an expression of love for God, while acknowledging that specific forms of ritual and practice are individual choices and should never be imposed through coercive means.
4) We affirm the equal status and equal worth of all human beings, regardless of religion, gender, race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. We oppose any restrictions on women’s full participation in society and believe that separation and segregation of men and women is contrary to the equity among genders enshrined in the Quran. We endorse the human rights and liberties of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans-sexual individuals. We believe that Muslim women and men, gay and straight, of all nationalities, ethnicities, and races should work together, shoulder-to-shoulder, in their effort to rejuvenate our community.
5) We affirm that justice and compassion should be the guiding principles for all aspects of human conduct. Islam holds that these qualities are characteristics of God as revealed in the holy Quran, divine qualities that are the ethical virtues to which all human beings should aspire to emulate.
6) We affirm our commitment to social and economic justice and our opposition to the culture of militarism and violence. We will support efforts for universal health care, public education, the protection of our environment, and the eradication of poverty around the world.
7) We reject the authoritarian, racist, sexist and homophobic interpretations of our faith as antithetical to the principles of justice and compassion.
8) We affirm the diversity of inspirations that motivate people to embrace a commitment to justice and compassion, including a profound faith rooted in religious traditions, ethical imperatives developed throughout the centuries, and secular and humanist values shared by many Muslims today.
9) We call for critical inquiry and dynamic engagement with Islamic scripture, early Muslim sources, the Islamic intellectual heritage, and traditional and current Muslim discourses.
10) We endorse the separation of religion and state in all matters of public policy, not only in North America, but also across the Muslim world. We believe that secular government is the only way to achieve the Islamic ideal of freedom from compulsion in matters of faith and that the separation of religion and state is a necessary pre-requisite to building democratic societies, where religious, ethnic, and racial minorities are accepted as equal citizens enjoying full dignity and human rights enunciated in the 1948 UN Declaration of Universal Human Rights.
11) We recognize the growing danger of religious extremism and view the politicization of religion and the intrusion of religion into politics as twin threats to civil society and humane civilization. We vow to resist the intrusion of religion into politics and the exploitation of religion for political ends.
12) Recognizing our participation in the broader human family, we seek to engage with and contribute to other philosophical and spiritual traditions and progressive movements.
Missourian: Here’s some Scriptural “core source documents” for you. Perhaps you can tell me what the opinion of an outsider would be using the same knowledge of “historical context” that you have regarding the Koran:
Leviticus 27:6 A child aged 1 month to five years of age was worth 5 shekels if a boy and 3 shekels if a girl.
Leviticus 12:1-5 Quotes God as stating that a woman who has given birth to a boy is ritually unclean for 7 days. If the baby is a girl, the mother is unclean for 14 days.
Hosea 13:16: Their infants shall be dashed in pieces and their women with child shall be ripped up.
Psalm 137:9: Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.
II Kings 2:23,24: And as [Elijah] was going up by the way, there
came forth little children [who] and said unto him, ‘Go up, thou bald head’… And he… cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty
and two children of them
Deuteronomy 21:18-21: If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son…
Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city… And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die.
Timothy 2:11-14: Women should learn in silence in all subjection;
… Eve was sinful, Adam blameless
Deuteronomy 22:28-29 requires that a virgin woman who has been raped must marry her attacker, no matter what her feelings are towards the rapist. “If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife….”
“As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active power of the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of a woman comes from defect in the active power….” Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica,Q92, art. 1, Reply Obj. 1
False Issues: Note 43 and 44
JamesK, I have addressed this about twenty times, but, I’ll repeat. The comment rejoinder when Islam is criticized is for someone to pop up and say “but Christians have done bad things also, and there is some harsh material scattered in the Bible also.” For your benefit, here are the proper rules of debate and comparison.
A)Compare the the same historical periods. Compare medieval Christianity with medieval Islam. Compare modern Christianity with modern Islam. There is no comparison between the teaching of the Christian church of today and the Imams of the Islam. Woman, TODAY, are being stoned to death in Iran. The cultural Left remains just as obdurately disconnected with this reality as it was to the butchery of Lenin, Stalin and the vast gulags of Russia.
B)Old Testament references to the relations of the sexes have to be read in light of the New Testament. I am no Bible scholar, but, then JamesK, neither are you. However, most people are aware that Our Lord said that divorce had been allowed because of the hardness of our hearts. Jesus taught us that when a man and a woman marry “they become one.” This core model of unity of the marriage bond is the paradigm of the relationship between a mature man and a mature woman. Mohammed taught Muslims that the paradigm of the relationship of a Muslim man to his “wives” was that of a farmer to his field.
C)Compare teachings of Our Lord with the teachings our Mohammed and Allah’s instructions. Timothy and St. Thomas were greater Christians than I will ever be, but, they are just people. We don’t worship them.Look at the teachings of Jesus on the matter of the relationships between the sexes and then compare then to Mohammed. It was Mohammed who said that “women are deficient in intellect.” It was Mohammed that said that Muslim men can “marry up to four wives and sexually exploit all the slave girls in his hourse.’
D)The reality of Islam is publicly on view for all who choose to take a look. Beside the Koran and the hadith one need only look at the reality of life in the Islamic world. May I suggest the book Islam and Human Rights, Tradition and Politics by Ann Elizabeth Mayer, Associate Professor of Legal Studies at the University of Pennsylvania for a comparison of the CURRENT LEGAL CODES OF ISLAMIC COUNTRIES AND those in the West. Here is the Amazon reference:
False Issues: Note 43 and 44
JamesK, I have addressed this about twenty times, but, I’ll repeat. The comment rejoinder when Islam is criticized is for someone to pop up and say “but Christians have done bad things also, and there is some harsh material scattered in the Bible also.” For your benefit, here are the proper rules of debate and comparison.
A)Compare the the same historical periods. Compare medieval Christianity with medieval Islam. Compare modern Christianity with modern Islam. There is no comparison between the teaching of the Christian church of today and the Imams of the Islam. Woman, TODAY, are being stoned to death in Iran. The cultural Left remains just as obdurately disconnected with this reality as it was to the butchery of Lenin, Stalin and the vast gulags of Russia.
B)Old Testament references to the relations of the sexes have to be read in light of the New Testament. I am no Bible scholar, but, then JamesK, neither are you. However, most people are aware that Our Lord said that divorce had been allowed because of the hardness of our hearts. Jesus taught us that when a man and a woman marry “they become one.” This core model of unity of the marriage bond is the paradigm of the relationship between a mature man and a mature woman. Mohammed taught Muslims that the paradigm of the relationship of a Muslim man to his “wives” was that of a farmer to his field.
C)Compare teachings of Our Lord with the teachings our Mohammed and Allah’s instructions. Timothy and St. Thomas were greater Christians than I will ever be, but, they are just people. We don’t worship them.
Look at the teachings of Jesus on the matter of the relationships between the sexes and then compare then to Mohammed. It was Mohammed who said that “women are deficient in intellect.” It was Mohammed that said that Muslim men can “marry up to four wives and sexually exploit all the slave girls in his hourse.’
D)The reality of Islam is publicly on view for all who choose to take a look. Beside the Koran and the hadith one need only look at the reality of life in the Islamic world. May I suggest the book Islam and Human Rights, Tradition and Politics by Ann Elizabeth Mayer, Associate Professor of Legal Studies at the University of Pennsylvania for a comparison of the CURRENT LEGAL CODES OF ISLAMIC COUNTRIES AND those in the West. Here is the Amazon reference.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0813335043/ref=sib_fs_bod/002-1425545-4640865?%5Fencoding=UTF8&p=S00M&checkSum=ADql9EbnXQH%2BxlhZmk%2BhHe8Cgw0%2FttMjRvuXQ5JmeXc%3D#reader-link
True Arrogance:
JamesK, as you well know from my previous postings on this board, I am an attorney who is licensed to practice in two states. I have more than 20 years legal experience. As an attorney, the Constitution of the United States is within the scope of professional expertise. I submit that there is nothing arrogant about an attorney who discussing the Constitution. If your rejoinder is that anyone can claim anything on a internet board, I can inform you that I have supplied details about my professional credentials directly to Fr. Jacobse.
What I consider arrogant is someone who takes it upon himself to pontificate about legal and constitutional matter without a SHRED of knowledge. You are just offended that I pointed out your total absence of knowledge. Despite your virtually complete lack of knowledge of our legal system you have never dropped your professorial tone of instruction on matters of law.
As I have noted many times on this board, I generally do not comment on theological matters, even minor ones, because I don’t consider myself sufficiently well-trained and well-informed in theology and Bible studies and church history. I am doing some reading on those topics but it will be a very long time before I offer opinions on them.
Note 43 Stereotyping 101
STEP ONE: CHARGE THAT MISSOURIAN WAS STEREOTYPING
Let’s get back to the core. When I listed features of the Islamic Sharia law you claimed that I was “sterotyping” Muslims. Let’s look at the meaning of the word “sterotyping.” From Websters.
A conventional, formulaic, and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image.
STEP TWO: MISSOURIANS SUBMISSION OF AUTHORITATIVE SOURCES TO BACK UP MY DESCRIPTION OF SHARIA LAW
In respone to your claim that my listing of the features of Sharia law, I supplied references, from both ancient and current Isalmic sources. A current Islamic source is “The Reliance of the Traveler” published by a modern University of Cairo. Another authoritative source is Ann Elizabeth Mayer’s book on Islam and Human Rights. At this point, you have no real rejoinder, because my assertions are not “stereotypes.” They are accurate. My listing of the feature of Sharia law is accurate, NOT a STEREOTYPE.
STEP THREE: JamesK SHIFTS HIS ARGUMENT:
You shift your argument to “I am defending the ‘exceptions to the rule'” Note 34. This is interesting because you are admitting that THE MUSLIMS RULE is Sharia. Nice, JamesK, but no one was attacking the exceptions to the rule.
STEP FOUR: JamesK PROVES MISSOURIAN’S POINT
Note 43 is very interesting. It is a posting from the Progressive Muslim Union of North America. This, of course, proves my previous assertions. These folks seem like nice folks but they COULD ONLY EXIST in North America. Muslims who emigrate here enjoy freedom of religion. They can band together and promote what they consider to be “reformations” of Islam. Good for them. However, their existence proves my assertion, but this could only happen in North America. In Iran, Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan, Indonesia and many other countries they would be in jail.
JamesK and Useful Idiots, Quibbling in the Face of Murder and Oppression
In the fact of murder and oppression raging across the world, you have chosen to concoct a phony grievance and defend a group that isn’t being attacked. No one was was attacking revisionist Muslims who live in the North America. But it is obvious that THEY DON’T WIELD POWER IN THE MUSLIM WORLD. They have no armies, no treasure, no territory and precious little influence in the Muslim world. Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have armies, weapons and funds. It is these people who are working to advance Sharia.
The “Muslims” of the Progressive Muslim Association of North America seem like nice people. Since they live in North America, they are safe. They are most definitely NOT persecuted as they would be in any Islamic country. The only danger they face is that they may be assaulted BY MUSLIMS. That is why Salman Rushdie, Taslima Nasrin, and Ali Ayaan Hirsi live under death threats. That is why Van Gogh was murdered.
The entire world today is under assault by militant Islam. Look at this website http://www.thereliginofpeace.com for a listing of the jihadi murders occuring all over the world. Attacks on non-Muslims have been undertaken in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Iraq,India, Russia, Spain, England, the United States and many more countries. All the tired excuses about Muslims greivances just don’t explain why Buddhist monks are getting their throats cut in Thailand.
OTHER TERRORIST GROUPS
Are there other, non-Muslim terrorist groups? Yes, this are remnants of the Basque separatists, remnants of the IRA, there are tne narco-terrorists of Columbia and the American heirs of the KKK. But the entire membership of all of these groups combined is trivial compared the the active jihadi warriors, None of these terrorists groups have a world-wide network. With the exception of the narco-terrorists of Columbia, none of them are FUNDED by large and wealthy governments.
JIHAD IN MUSLIM HISTORY
Jihad IS the history of Islam. Mohammed was a war lord. Mohammed is considered the “ideal human being.” in Islam, everything he did is considered pleasing to God and worthy of imitation.
JamesK, fights the Safe Battle
Thousands of people are brutally murdered all over the world by jihadis who claim the Koran and the Hadith as their ruling documents. Millions of Muslims cheer them on and give direct and indirect support. People are dying brutal deaths daily.
What does JamesK focus on? What is his grand claim to fame? He is worried that some tiny group of Muslim reformers (who can only safely operate in North America) might be misdescribed and confused with the jihadis. But note, the reformers do not look to the Koran as inspiration. They are not supported by the Koran, that is why, they are NOT orthodox Muslims. Now, no one has jailed these people, as they would be jailed in Iran, Jordan, Egypt and Pakistan. No one had beheaded these people, as they would be in Saudi Arabia. No one has blocked their right to gather together and publish their ideas. No they are safe in the Anglo-American system of law handed to us by our forbears who were infused with and inspired by the Judaeo-Christian tradition. They are safe because generations of Americans fought for and preserved the concept of “freedom of religion” and “freedom of speech” concepts vigorously OPPOSED BY ISLAM.
This is directly analogous to the activities of the Left who claimed mistreatment in America while Stalin, Kruschev, Breshnev and Gorbachev ground millions into dust in the Gulag. In the end, the Left loves its dictatorships and its totalitarian systems. There is no question that the Left is drawn to the totalitarian nature of Sharia law and Islam, they are natural allies.
Warning to female Lefties and gay Lefties, if the Left thinks it can obtain power by betraying your causes and joining the Islamists they will do it in heartbeat. They have already begun to do it in the U.K. See George Galloway. You aren’t betting on the right horse here.
JamesK Straight from the Islamic Declaration Of Human Rights
JamesK, please tell me how this stereotypes Muslims, as the document Ms. Mayer describes was adopted by and promoted by the Organization of Islamic States, representing millions and millions of Muslims worldwide.
From Elizabeth Ann Mayer, Islam and Human Rights, pages 160-161, Westview Press, 1999
[begin quote]
The Arabic version of Article 1.2a [Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights] conveys a very different message [than the English version of the same document] because it reveals that Islamic criteria limit freedom of speech. It states: “Everyone may think, believe and express his ideas and beliefs without intereference or opposition from anyone as long as he obeys the limits [hudud] set by the sharia….” This, sharia rules set limits not just on freedom of expression but also on the freedom of thought and belief. As has already been pointed out, such use of the criteria of one religion to set limits on rights are unacceptable under international human rights laws. One can surmise what specific rules in the sharia would likely be employed to curtail these freedoms. For example, one would expect that in a system based on the sharia, at a minimum people sould be prohibited from attempting to convert Muslims to other faiths and forbidden to speak disparagingly of the Prophet [sic]. [end quote]
Again, Ms. Mayer is a professor of legal studies at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Missourian wrote, “About the mid 1990’s he stopped co-operating and at one point he physically threw the inspectors out of Iraq.”
That’s not true, Missourian. Bill Clinton withdrew the inspectors so that he could bomb the living Hell out of Iraq and distract the country from Monicagate. The bombings started the day the impeachment vote came down.
This is from the ‘Fairness and Acccuracy in Media’ report on the subject: “The story centers on the Iraq crisis that broke out on December 16, 1998. Richard Butler, head of the United Nations weapons inspection team in Iraq, had just released a report accusing the Iraqi regime of obstructing U.N. weapons checks. On the basis of that report, President Clinton announced he would launch airstrikes against Iraqi targets. Out of concern for their safety, Butler withdrew his inspectors from Iraq, and the U.S.-British bombing proceeded.”
Attacking Iraq was used by Clinton for political advantage. The man was a liar, thief, and a murderer. He was also president of the United States. So much for any special charism going with that office.
After tangling with us in 1991, all evidence seems to point to the fact that Saddam would have dearly loved to patch things up. The same thing applies to Milosovich in Serbia. Transcipts of the Dayton Peace Accords show him practically groveling before President Clinton.
That is the real problem here. American presidents and politicians deal in such absolutes, that they rhetorically trap themselves into a corner. Once someone is ‘worse than Hitler’ then it is impossible to ever negotiate with that person again. We could have easily had a deal with Saddam that would have allowed him to focus on Iran – his problem and ours. We could have easily had a deal with Milosovich that allowed us both to focus on Albanian Muslim nutcases running riot in the Balkans.
But we couldn’t, not after they became the new Hitler. Now the process is repeating itself with Syria. Assad has become the new incarnation of evil, even though he is a secular dictator belonging to a hated religious minority. Christians flee Iraq to HIDE in Syria because Assad protects them from the Sunni Muslims.
We threatened Assad, and he pulled out of Lebanon. How did Bush reward his cooperation, we just extended sanctions against the country for another year. Syrian diplomats are begging us to just tell them what we want. Even Israeli newspapers are commenting that our implacable animosity towards Syria doesn’t make any sense. Yet, there it is.
Just like with Saddam, once the U.S. gets you in the gunsights, reason and logic go out the window. It is a bi-partisan sickness we suffer.
As for Iraq’s Constitution, the Assyrian Christians oppose it. In fact, they have condemned it. That alone makes me believe that it is a seriously flawed document and a bad idea. Not that it will matter, in the end. The Shi’ites will win in December, form a government, and then the real killing will start.
The only question then will be – when the duly constituted Shi’ite state starts the mass murder of Sunni, Turks, and Christians, what will U.S. forces do? Start a war with 60% of the population, or just look the other way? And if we do try and step in, will we end up fighting Iranian ‘volunteers’ who are there to help their Shi’ite brethren?
Sorry – I can’t see any sense in our policies. Sorry – I can’t see much hope for the future. At this point, I’d just be happy to see the millions of Orthodox Christians in Syria avoid having to flee to Lebanon. At least may be we can focus on containing the damage, and learning to vote for politicians who won’t let their rhetoric stand in the way of their common sense.
At the same time, I’d be happy to actually start dealing with Islam in a sensible manner. To date, no American administration has EVER done so.
Glen I almost wet my pants laughing about your use of FAIR as some sort of unbiased authority. Using FAIR as a source of unbiased information is like using Bill Kristol and the American Spectator to get a positive review of the Clinton Administration.
To say that Clinton removed the inspectors is only half of the equation. They were removed by the IAEA because they were unable to continue with inspections, because Saddam refused to allow them to. Do some reading in the Washington Post during this time period and look for articles written by the Nuclear Control Institute about what was occuring at the time.
To say that he attacked Iraq purely to cover his political problems is a bit cynical and that he had the power of mind control to make Saddam do the things necessary to allow him to bomb Iraq.
Glen wrote: “After tangling with us in 1991, all evidence seems to point to the fact that Saddam would have dearly loved to patch things up…”
I find this statement incredible to believe especially that after the war he began a policy of firing on coalition aircraft, attacking his own people — both the Kurds and the southern Shiites, and sponsoring terrorism through his support of Hezbollah and Hamas. Unless you have some hard evidence I find it impossible to believe.
As far as Milosovich you’re making the assumption that Washington set the agenda in the Balkans. The Clinton Administration didn’t. They just assumed the policies that were established by France/U.K. through the EU. If you want to direct your anger then I would direct it more to the French Foreign office, and Strasbourg, than Sec. Albright’s State Dept.; unless you want to vent about their ineptitude to establish their own Balkans agenda.
Concerning Syria, their foreign office knows exactly what the problem is. Their support of terrorism — primarily their support of Hezbollah and Hamas by allowing them operate opening in Damascus and the funneling of Iranian money. The other problem is their failure to safeguard the common border with Iraq by stopping foreign terrorists from going into the country. For their foreign officers to “beg us” what they want is just politically pandering to the Arab street to portray themselves as the victim.
I find you statements to be more wishful thinking and propaganda than credible.