Dean Esmay is taking a stand against Islamophobes. In and of itself, not a bad idea.
But as someone who doesn’t consider himself an Islamophobe, but thinks that questions about the future of Islam – as arguably one of the most powerful religious movements in the world, and as one which both has more temporal power (because it is more tightly tied both to state power and the daily lives of its adherents) than most other religions, and whose future is up for grabs – with one set of grabbers people who really do believe that religious wars are a Good Idea – I think that he is, as I’ve said before, burying his conclusions in his assumptions.
1. The future of Islam matters a lot to all of us. 2. It’s far from certain what the future of Islam will be. And that’s about the only two ‘bright line’ statements on the subject that I’ll sign on to.
As a matter of personal style and belief, I don’t think it’s a good idea to make anyone swear that they believe or don’t believe anything to associate with you. What matters is behavior, not belief, and I’m sad that Dean doesn’t get that.
I disagree with half of Dean’s purity test on the terms he insists on (no weasel-wording). I can be offended by the use of “taqiyya,” but someone of my thinking still isn’t pure enough for Dean.
Purity laws weaken the mind, which grows complacent and self-absorbed in the absence of challenge. It’s a problem in the world these days.
PD Shaw – Why are you concerned about the use of the word taqiyya? It is a valid and well understood part of Islam.
phobia = an irrational, persistent fear of certain situations, objects, activities, or persons
From Wikipedia. My dislike and disdain of Jihadis is not irrational. It perfectly rational and proven so every day in the news of the real world.
Any belief based litmus test for membership in a group or organization makes sure I do not want to belong or patronize that group. That is the end of free and open intellectual discourse. The exception I have to make is churches. They pretty much have a price tag of belief to membership, but most Christian ones will help the unbeliever the same as the believer. The same cannot be said for most Mosques.
Esmay can do what he wishes, it is his blog. Never a palce I would have visited anyway.
The Hobo
It’s good when people to make it clear, preferably in polite words, where they really stand.
And, people can do what they want on their own blogs. The title of the blog is Dean’s World, is it not? Dean is entitled to bar from Dean’s World anyone he wishes, and to impose and enforce all the ideological and religious purity tests he likes. He can just as well ban everyone who does not agree that HIV has nothing to do with AIDS.
Dean had no intention to be fair or polite to people like Robert Spencer anyway. There cannot be a sensible conversation on some topics with Dean Esmay in it. So when Dean formally banned all dissenters from his wild assumptions from his little world, the true state of play was made clearer at no cost to reasonable debate.
I only commented at Dean’s World a long, long time ago, and never meant to again anyway, unless he gave Robert Spencer a pretty handsome apology, which obviously will never happen, so this is no skin off my nose.
Someone else who won’t get the point until either Sharia is established in the USA and it’s too late, or an American city goes up in smoke, or both. sigh.
Islam’s prophet and its most unholy book exhort its followers to lie, cheat, steal, murder, rape and make war for the purpose of establishing Islam as the only religion and the only law for the whole of humanity. Whatever it takes to do that is acceptable.
Islam has been doing just that for thirteen hundred years or so, and will continue to do that until either it is reformed extensively or it is comprehensively beaten – the latter only to be achieved by killing most of its adherents.
Islam is totally and irrevocably incompatible, short of a reform so major as to make it a different religion, with a society much advanced from the Middle Ages – and in fact no Islamic country, where Sharia is followed, is so advanced.
Conclusion? The very least that the West needs to do is to stop accommodating Islam, in any way, in its own social institutions; and to stop any further immigration from the Islamic world.
Slightly further down the list is the need to stop giving the Islamic world jizyah; which means mostly that we need to find some alternative to the only thing that the Islamic world has to offer, which is oil.
That is what I believe. Guess I won’t be commenting on Dean’s site.
He lost me at most of his points, but there’s one in particular that just had me laughing: the prohibition on saying that there has been a war of Islam against the West for over a thousand years. There are two reasons I laugh at that: the Islamic division of the world into the houses of submission and war makes it pretty clear that the Islamic mind set fundamentally incorporates war against anything not Islam as part of its makeup; and if you read the history of the wars against the Barbary Coast pirates, the statements made by the Muslim pirates are more or less identical to the statements made by the terrorists today, and the statements made by the rulers of the Barbary states are pretty much identical to the statements made by “moderate” rulers today (at least to the extent that “you’d better be nice to us and give us stuff, or we won’t like you, and some irresponsible people, clearly a small minority, will kill you; sorry” was even then a part of their lexicon).
But not in Dean’s World. In Dean’s World, it’s all flowers and puppies and all will be well as long as we ignore reality. It’s his right, of course, and more power to him. It’s just sad, is all, to see someone so drenched in fantasy and utterly unwilling to talk about any alternatives to his views.
In Dean’s World, it’s all flowers and puppies
And the irony is that for nearly all Muslims, the puppies are “unclean”.
_Why are you concerned about the use of the word taqiyya? It is a valid and well understood part of Islam._
The only manner in which I’ve seen _taqiyya_ used in the blogosphere is to call someone a liar because they are Muslim. Often misapplied to Sunnis.
I think “Daniel Pipes”:http://www.danielpipes.org/comments/22161 is of a similar view since he doesn’t frequently participate in the comments on his site, but he has on more than one occasion posted this corrective:
_Taqiyya is a Shi`i concept and involves self-preservation; it is not a general Islamic justification of lying._
I don’t demand everyone share my sensibilities, but that’s what they are.
“The only manner in which I’ve seen taqiyya used in the blogosphere is to call someone a liar because they are Muslim.”
Really? The only manner? I have frequently seen it used to describe actual cases of Muslim leaders lying to Westerners, talking peace and tolerance to us, but hate and violence to other Muslims. This has, in fact, become a standing joke: The press falls all over itself fawning over the latest moderate Muslim leader it has discovered, and fails to make a serious effort to question or investigate said leader who is later revealed to be anything but moderate.
Well, I understand what he’s trying to do, even if it’s not the best strategy(keep in mind that I have not read his blog before, so I’m guessing based on why I would write such a thing). IT appears to me that he is trying to gear the debate towards the areas he is most interested in.
For example: he doesn’t debate on whether Muslims are *the devil*, and just get on to how do we make ME society’s evolve into western societies.
Keep in mind, this is his blog. The goal on his blog, apparently, is to debate a narrow area of this ‘culture clash’, and not deal with the idea that this is a armageddon-esque battle for supremacy. If that’s his goal, it makes sense to remove those who stray from his goal.
I think it’s a shame,personally. It’s better to test yourself against viewpoints directly contrary to your own. If you can’t deal with them now, you won’t be able to deal with them later. Of course, there are very few WOC.net, on the right or left, so it’s not a surprise when another site raises deaf ears to their opponents.
#9 from alchemist: “Well, I understand what he’s trying to do, even if it’s not the best strategy(keep in mind that I have not read his blog before, so I’m guessing based on why I would write such a thing). IT appears to me that he is trying to gear the debate towards the areas he is most interested in.”
What Dean says he is doing is imposing an ideological purity test.
Is this a test of “ideological purity?”
Why yes. Yes it is.
This is not at all like, say, a law-blogger saying “I won’t discuss Islam here because I only blog on American law, which is what I know about.”
Dean hasn’t shown a lack of interest in what people like Robert Spencer say. He has shown a lack of fair play, intellectual good conduct and plain politeness.
Right under “Dean’s World” it says, “Defending the liberal tradition in history, science and philosophy”.
Apparently Dean’s interpretation of the liberal tradition in history is that it calls for pro-Islamic dogma to be enforced by personal attacks, profanity and use of the gag to shut up dissenters.
Dean has the right to do that on his blog. It’s his dime, and everybody has the moral right to make it clear where they stand.
Dean does not have a right, while making it very clear where he stands, to be evaluated by others as though he was standing somewhere other than where he is.
Here is Dean in the comment thread to his ideological purity test showing exactly what attitude he is enforcing:
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Dean Esmay:
#3 is contingent upon your belief that Osama Bin Laden is right and that Islam has been at war with Christianity and “the West” for 1,400 years.
Which means that you think Osama Bin Laden is somehow an “authentic voice” for Islam.
Stop trying to rationalize it. #3 is as stupid and destructive as all the rest. If you don’t recognize this, there’s an obvious course of action for you:
Look up in the upper right hand corner for the little “X” button. Click it. Then don’t come back.
If you want to embrace fucking nutjob conspiracy theorist murderer logic, then do it somewhere else. This isn’t the place for you.
This point is as non-negotiable as all the rest. There is no 1,400 year old war except in the minds of deluded psychopaths. If you think there is one, then you need to go and play with your fellow paranoid nutjob friends.
“Non-negotiable” means exactly what you think it means.
I don’t much give a fuck whether you like it or not, either. Go find somewhere else to play if you cannot accept basic sanity as a precondition to discussions.
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Dean does not have a right to be accepted in polite, rational discussion places, such as Winds of Change aspires to be and often is. I do not think his next bit of disgusting behavior, or the one after it, or the one after that, should lead to posts here. He is just a potty-mouthed dogmatist and hater. And angry, negative people, like Dean, are bad for your brain.
Yeah, not a nice post. I concur. (Although, I also disagree with the 1,400 year war thing).
Dean Esmay can get pretty vitriolic and personal in his disagreements. Meaningful debate might require a reduction in the range of viewpoints for this reason. His ant-Christian screeds are also part of the fun.
Um, that would be anti-Christian.
Dean’s a fool.
I note that one of his comment replies to another comment states that his #3 assertion, that Islam is as compatible with modern life as any other religion, is right unless you buy into Osama bin Laden being an authoritative representative of Islam. And then you’re being a religious nutjob just like bin Laden.
When asked who is more authoritative regarding Islam, OBL or Dean Esmay, I know that I would pick the Muslim as being more authoritative than the non-Muslim.
This whole thing reminds me of an article in the Weekly Standard a few weeks back, to be found here.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Check.asp?idArticle=13266&r=rcnca
There is a conflict in American democracy between those who want to debate freely, with no argument being deemed out of bounds, and those who want to restrict the arguments to acceptable components (pre-approved by an elite group of academic and political gatekeepers) that predetermine the outcome. Esmay isn’t just keeping the wackos out of his sandbox, he is enforcing political correctness within it. And as a result, nothing that comes out of the sandbox will challenge politically correct assumptions, therefore nobody will ever say anything mean about Islam in his sandbox.
I guess he likes vapid happy talk. No surprise.
The important question is WHY is Dean Esmay the way he is?
Esmay like all Libs is in deep denial about the nature of the world. That there exist hard, psychopathic, brutal, monsters of men in the world, who want sincerely and absolutely to kill and enslave those with any bit of money and prosperity.
Fighting back against these monsters, like bin Laden or Zarqawi or Zawahari or their front men like Tariq Ramadan is ugly, brutal, dirty, nasty and disgusting work.
It’s Mike Rowe’s worst nightmare. A job so dirty even he’d balk.
Esmay’s deep denial is that he can’t acknowledge that his world of safe suburban living is fragile and must be protected by ugly brutality.
If I cared enough about Esmay to create an account on his site I would have asked him his opinion as to how well the following religions or cults were suited for modern life.
1. Aztec sacrificial worship, with daily human sacrifices on the top step of the pyramid to Huitzilopochtli, the God of the Smoking Mirror.
2. The Thuggee, who ritually murdered strangers in the dark of night to satisfy the dark appetites of Kali, the ravenous consort of Shiva’s dark side.
3. Moloch worship, with children being thrown into a red hot bronze idol of a bull, to perish in the flames, all for the glory of Ba’al Moloch.
4. The Charles Manson Family. Helter Skelter. Nuff said.
For full disclosure, here is why I am an Islamophobe:
_1) Islam does not represent the forces of Satan or the Anti-Christ bent on destruction of the Christian world._
Agree with reservations. I view Satan as a metaphor for evil. To the extent that Islam represents repression and fear and violence, I can see why someone might be tempted to call it evil in the way Reagan called the Soviet Union an “evil empire.” But Reagan didn’t call Marxism evil. Marx is an interesting and useful philosopher, you just may not want to take everything he said literally. So I might be willing to call Iran evil, but not Islam.
_2) There is no 1,400 year old “war with the West/Christianity” being waged by Muslims or anyone else._
Disagree. The key phrase is “anyone else.” There are a number of jihadist movements that are waging that war. That doesn’t mean that the jihadist movements are necessarily correct are reflect the true “Islam.” But there is a war.
_3) Islam as a religion is no more inherently incompatible with modernity, minority rights, women’s rights, or democratic pluralism than most religions._
Disagree. I believe most religions have their unique issues, but they are usually not the same issues. Islam has inherent problems with modernity, stemming in my view from a rigid codification of pre-modern values in an inelastic text.
_4) Medieval, anachronistic, obscure terms like “dhimmitude” or “taqiyya” are suitable for polite intellectual discussion. They are not and never will be appropriate to slap in the face of everyday Muslims or their friends._
One of these words strike me as name-calling, the other does not. See above.
_5) Muslims have no more need to prove that they can be good Americans, loyal citizens, decent people, or enemies of terrorism than anyone else does._
Agree.
Putting aside the question of whether or not he’s justified in ‘dealing with’ Islamophobia, I think there’s a bunch of fascinating implications in his approach to combating Islamophobia, namely that he’s taking a shame/ostracize approach.
Or in other words he’s conflating Islamophobia with racism when the two aren’t the same thing.
Phobias are based on a gut level fear, rational or irrational. Racism is based more on a feeling of superiority, and/or scapegoating. I know there’s a theory floating around that racism is a function of the ‘fear of the unknown or different’, but I find that to not really be borne out in history. Were the Nazi’s afraid of the Jews? Was the KKK afraid of blacks? Racism is the process of dehumanizing a group of people in order to justify atrocities on them as well as assigning them blame for the problems of the racist.
The treatment to a phobia is familiarity, in other words to learn that the fear is ungrounded. Experience. The only cure for fear of heights is to learn that simply being up high isn’t dangerous. The only cure to arachnophobia is handling spiders. If one then falls or gets bitten, on the other hand though, the phobia then becomes justified and becomes harder to deal with.
Attempting to shame a phobic via ostracization though doesn’t do a thing about the phobia. It is, however, an effective approach against a racist because it punctures the, presumably unjustified, assumption of superiority the racist carries. After all, if he/she is so superior, wouldn’t everyone, particularly those of the same category as they are, want to associate with them? In other words, they must either deal with the racism, or invent reasons as to why they are better than the ones doing the ostracizing, down one road the cure, down the other obvious, and credibility destroying, madness.
By taking measures against Islamophobia, he is stating he believes it to be an ungrounded fear. But his proposed METHOD of dealing with that fear indicates a belief in it being a racism complex.
Why is he using one term, but another cure? Which is it, fear or racism?
I would propose that he uses the term as a deliberate dodge. He truly believes in the course his actions take, that it IS racism. But he cannot explain or justify how Islam is a race, because of course, it is not one.
And if one allows for racism to include dehumanizing treatment of members of belief systems (an interesting argument in it’s own right I think), particularly religions, he might actually have to go after those of his comrades who do exactly that with say, Christians. That being a Pandora’s Box of infinite proportions, it’s much easier to mix terms and hope no one notices.
If he actually believed it was islamoPHOBIA, he’d be doing his utmost to reach out to the afraid, to prove to them the fear is groundless, and provide evidence and examples of that. Better yet, to build experience of that.
Yet instead, he walls off those he claims are afraid. Interesting that.
#15 from Jim Rockford: “Esmay like all Libs…”
I do not think Armed Liberal, for one, “is in deep denial about the nature of the world.”
We disagree about many things. Sometimes, on some of these topics, it occurs to me that I might be the one that’s wrong.
And I think it would be pretty harsh to talk about “all liberals” with Dean Esmay as your starting point. “All liberals” don’t have potty mouths. “All liberals” don’t define themselves by defaming and silencing whoever disagrees with them on hot issues. (OK, a lot do, and it seems to be a characteristic of the breed. But not “all”, and the exceptions are numerous and important and active enough to matter.) “All liberals” don’t go in for Dean Esmay’s scene-making. And so on.
David –
…as do I…
A.L.
I think it is necessary to respond when someone tries to put something this misguided out and then declare the ‘debate’ over.
1) Islam does not represent the forces of Satan or the Anti-Christ bent on destruction of the Christian world.
You could make a cool nativity scene with all that straw. No real point in responding to crazy talk in either direction.
2) There is no 1,400 year old “war with the West/Christianity” being waged by Muslims or anyone else.
There is plenty of good evidence of a 1400 year old clash of civilizations .
Dean Esmay sticking his head in the sand doesn’t mean we will not be having more problems as Islam’s Ummah tries to reconcile their Diaspora with the globalizing western culture.
3) Islam as a religion is no more inherently incompatible with modernity, minority rights, women’s rights, or democratic pluralism than most religions.
A big majority of Dean’s posters quibbled with this one over wording or details, but I think they missed a huge point. I’m going to reach back to my roots on this one. Right after 9-11, this bit of biblical wisdom came screaming up out of the memory hole:
To me, it’s just that simple. Show me some results, Dean Esmay. And don’t argue culture, because, culture and religion get bound up together such that this is a fool’s argument. The culture, especially in this case, is informed by the dominant religion. It is primarily the results of the Islamic/Arabic culture that created what Thomas PM Barnett calls the Non-Integrating Gap. It is this Gap that we must resolve, either by integration or by containment.
You will not integrate them unless they (or we) make huge shifts in their cultural attitudes about modernity, minority rights, women’s rights, and democratic pluralism. If you think Islam has nothing to do with this, you are demonstrably and willfully blind.
4) Medieval, anachronistic, obscure terms like “dhimmitude” or “taqiyya” are suitable for polite intellectual discussion. They are not and never will be appropriate to slap in the face of everyday Muslims or their friends.
Who does Dean Esmay think we are dealing with? Does he not notice that Muslim’s have an acute sense of their history? If he would look at what many Muslims post (especially when talking to other Muslims or apostates), he would see that they are firmly anchored in medieval, anachronistic, and obscure (to us) thought processes and terminology. They quote scholars from the 13th century as if they were contemporaries.
Is Bat Yeor a complete liar about dhimmitude? I live in Detroit. The early migration to here from the Middle East was predominantly Christian, or non-Muslim. Why, if the Middle East is predominately Muslim? Clue here, maybe?
If Dean can’t see that Islam, as practiced by a large plurality of Muslims is exclusionary, triumphalist, intolerant, and dominating, then maybe he needs a slap in the face to wake up. Maybe he could go to Africa and live in a Christian village near the fault line.
5) Muslims have no more need to prove that they can be good Americans, loyal citizens, decent people, or enemies of terrorism than anyone else does.
Tell it to the Nisei. Lets go check in to see how the Muslim-American regiment of translators and civil affairs coordinators that signed up after 9-11 are doing. Hmmm? Where are they?
Dean Esmay would do better to pose and attempt to answer these seven questions. Six years later, I don’t think they have been answered. I find this troubling, and not a little incriminating of the Islamic culture/religion.
This is a pretty amusing thread.
For the commenter who suggested I attack Christianity–arrant nonsense. I’ve said some intemperate things to some Christians, usually bigots, but I’ve always made it clear that I don’t think Christianity is innately evil or that Christians can’t be good Americans.
It’s also pretty funny watching people claim I’m constructing straw men–which would suggest that there is no one who disagrees with my assertions–in a thread full of people who illustrate that it’s no straw man at all.
It’s hilarious to watch another Islamophobic commenter rant that the opinions of Muslims matter more than mine. Well yeah, duh, which is why the vast majority of Muslim scholars have condemned Bin Laden. You might also try asking some of my Muslim commenters and contributors think. But that might require re-examining your prejudices.
The fact is that American forces are fighting side by side with Muslims around the world. To defeat terrorism. Those of you who are unwilling to see any significance to that are pretty destructive to the war effort–and pretty deluded.
Islamophobia is clearly real. Armed Liberal is no Islamophobe at all, but this thread illustrates the existence of the phenomenon. It is a destructive force, and it has no more place in polite, civil society than anti-semitism or racism or anti-Christian bigotry.
The folks with their heads in the sand are those who claim that the breed of religious hatred known as Islamophobia represents no danger. I won’t even get in to the obvious profiteering that folks like Robert Spencer get out of peddling their deluded nonsense.
By the way, Marc, could you do me a favor and update your link to include this, where I explained that I was angry and overstated? Thanks.
Dean Esmay just doesn’t “get it”. I refuse to be part of his “world”. His personal attacks are unnecessary and he is the one with the irrationality complex.
I am still waiting for him to address Robert Spencer’s main points… instead he just insults.
At least Ali Eteraz talks to spencer nicely and on topic. That, I respect. Esmay… not so much anymore.
Dean Esmay is a raving lunatic. He mentions these Islamic “Scholars” who probably talk out of both sides of their mouth. They might say Bin Laden “doesn’t represent Islam”, but then will rant on and on about American imperialism and how evil Israel is. When you can round up for me 1000 Islamic “scholars” who will:
1. Denounce Wahhabism
2. Say that America is a postive force for change in the world
3. Say that Israel has a right to exist in peace
Then I’ll start to believe that my fear of Islam was unfounded. Until then, I’ll keep my “phobia”.
Another thing the way Islamo-apologists like Esmay have set up things, the burden of proof is apparently on Americans to prove that Muslims aren’t a wonderful, peace-loving culture. Apparently that culture is one that produces endless strife, misogyny, international terrorism and terrorist sanctuaries like in western Pakistan. Just tell me that everything I said is a slur and not true. Prove it.
Dean’s World… the perfect place for people who just can’t handle the real one.
Dean Esmay:
?
What is the color of the sky in Dean’s world?
The only reference to straw was in my comment #21 where I pointed out your point 1 was, in fact a straw man, since no-one at WoC (or anywhere else that I know of) was casting anything about Islam in terms of Satan and the Anti-Christ. Perhaps you are on some form of medication that we should be aware of and that would explain your sentence above?
What astonishes me is how few people can just disagree with Dean’s approach without ripping into him. It tends to prove his thesis, in my book. It’s not, gee, why did Dean do this (which was how the above post put it) but, What an a-hole! What a dhimmi!
Come on. Think about the issue and debate it. That can include disagreeing with Dean, but what is it that makes everyone so sure-fire arrogant about their own perspectives?
For the record…
1) Islam does not represent the forces of Satan or the Anti-Christ bent on destruction of the Christian world.
I agree. I think there is no Satan, nor is there any Anti-Christ or any Christ, and Jesus of Nazareth is not risen.
(No offense to the many splendid people who think otherwise. Some of my best friends etc..)
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2) There is no 1,400 year old “war with the West/Christianity” being waged by “The Muslims” or anyone else.
It’s more like a war on everybody, with polytheists having an even worse status than Christians and Jews.
The prophet Muhammed (pbuh) instituted jihad, the violent and bloody Muslim concept of holy struggle, and nobody has authority to un-institute it.
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3) Islam as a religion is no more inherently incompatible with modernity, minority rights, women’s rights, or democratic pluralism than most ancient religions.
I disagree, strongly. Most of the ancient religions worth discussing were, or like Shinto or Hinduism still are, good, hugely under-rated, and in different ways (not all in the same way) ornaments to mankind.
Sometimes reforms were needed, as with bride-burning in India, and the extirpation of the Thugs, but the reforms that were most needed were on the whole possible, and particularly in Japan and India, look how fine the people are who follow these religions today.
Would Pakistan be a better place if it was Hindu, and would Japan be a worse place if it was Muslim? I think so.
Ancient Roman religion was great civilization-building stuff and would probably work as well as Christianity. I think it would work much better on the whole. (But I would still prefer a society of Christians because I am pro-life, as Christianity traditionally has been, and the Greeks and Romans accepted infant exposure, which is to say ancient world abortion.) Believers in the Roman gods today seem as reasonable as anybody gets, on the whole. Classical Roman = Great!!
Ancient Greek religion had much less problem with democracy than Islam, among many other points of superiority. (Sculpture is fine for Greek religion and problematic for Islam.) And again, it’s not todays worshipers of the gods of Ancient Greece that have made themselves known by flying planes into buildings. Classical Greek = good stuff!
Ancient Egyptian religion has healthier attitudes to women than most religions, past or present, and vastly better than Islam, which is among the worst religions in this regard. Today, you can see that wherever Egyptian religion is attempted to be revived, women take a prominent role, because that’s fine. And there are many, many points I would argue in favor of ancient Egyptian religion. The only major problem is the tradition of sacred kingship – but that’s been fixed beautifully in Japan. So this must be do-able.
African traditional religions at the present time have heart-breaking problems. That’s a big topic I’m not about to get into – except that the ruthless redefinition of more and more of Africa as Arab (and Muslim) rather than Black strikes me as a “cure” worse than any native “disease”.
Celtic religions are a lot less problematic than Islam in all sorts of ways. Germanic religion is vastly better than Islam in all sorts of ways. And so on. I’d trust followers of Percunas more than followers of Allah to be long term good bets as immigrants to Australia, and I think anyone who says there is no basis for that preference is likely uninformed or not being straightforward.
Zoroastrianism, which Islam viciously stomped on, is or in its prime was a better civilization-building, not civilization-devouring, religion, compared to Islam. If it was Zoroastrian not Muslim (and secure) I have no doubt that Persia would be a much nicer place, more culturally productive, and radically less problematic and dangerous.
If Confucianism counts as an ancient religion – and I think it should – that is one of mankind’s jewels. Islam is no more than the ravings of a brigand by comparison. Confucius was so morally superior to Muhammed (pbuh) personally and as a teacher (judged by his schools and long term influence as well as his words) that I’m at I’m at a loss to sufficiently stress the difference. I also think Confucius was a more impressive teacher than Jesus of Nazareth. There’s a reason why China is special, and it’s not Marx or Mao.
Or, look at the Hare Krishnas – it’s a modern movement, but in an ancient religion. If Muslims were as peaceful as the Hare Krishnas – but of course they aren’t.
Islam is really among the most dangerous and least suitable religions inherently, even apart from its power today. You have to get to religions that are not much better than demon worship to find something worse.
We don’t have enough information to say whether Islam would be better or worse than Punic religion on the whole, but my guess would be that Islam is inherently a little worse than that – and much more dangerous because of its greater staying power and expansionism.
But Islam would not be as bad as an updated Aztec or Assyrian religion might be, depending on what adjustments the revived religion made in adjusting to modern technology, science and circumstances. Islam is not “pure and perfect evil” or anything like it. It is just unusually though not uniquely bad – say in the bottom quarter of major ancient religions for benevolence, though a killer competitor – and a lot worse than anything we should be willing to give way to.
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4) Medieval, anachronistic, obscure terms like “dhimmitude” or “taqiyya” are suitable for intellectual discussion & analysis. They are not and never will be appropriate to slap in the face of everyday Muslims or their friends.
Terms like “dhimmitude” or “taqiyya” are suitable for intellectual discussion & analysis. Definitely. And they are best suited to that context, that is, they are best used with some precision.
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5) Muslims have no more need to prove that they can be good Americans, loyal citizens, decent people, or enemies of terrorism than anyone else does.
I disagree, though this is something I lay no stress on.
If people are reasonable, so that no suspicion of their motives reasonably attaches to them, fine.
If they seem problematic in ways that are characteristic of Islam, and they are indeed Muslim, that is a problem, more so than it would be with someone who superficially was being about equally obnoxious or worrying, but who was not attached to any malign religion or ideology. “Muslim” is a red flag that may not mean any harm by itself, but when you add other red flags like “often and angrily insults Jews” it means “this problem may be much more serious than just bad manners or individual prejudice. It may mean jihad. And jihad, in fact rather than in polite lies, is often bloody dangerous.”
Dean: _I’ve said some intemperate things to some Christians, usually bigots, but I’ve always made it clear that I don’t think Christianity is innately evil or that Christians can’t be good Americans._
You set the tone on your blog. You may want to consider whether your intemperate statements about Christianity only drive away temperate Christians.
P. D. Shaw,
Marxism is evil in any useful sense of the word. What else would you call an ideology that divides humanity into two groups and labels one as inherently exploitive based on the type of property they owned. Mercy me that guy owns a loom so he must be evil. Then advocates the separation of the “out group” from their property. In other words he advocated stealing from and if need be murdering others. Can’t get much more evil than that.
Of course there’s no need to listen to me since I’m bourgeoisie and only speak from my “class”. I’m also a proletariat but Marx would not bend to reality in such matters. You were in one group or the other.
Jim Rockford,
I don’t agree with your assessment of Dean. He is not in denial about the existence of bad guys and he’s more than willing to crack heads. Problem is that he has a big problem identifying the bad guys.
I have to say that Dean has freaking lost it with his own brand of political correctness. It all strikes me as rather BBC like. Then again it is his blog and he can do what ever the hell he wants with it. He seems to take a view that because American Muslims are fine and fairly well intergrated into the US then that is the case everywhere else.
British Muslims are blowing up the rest of their fellow Britons because of Islamophobia. (Ironically that is the BBC/Guardian line.)
I knew he was going off the boil with his thoughts on the subject of Islam when he was rather vile to me over my review of Robert Spencer’s new book. Some of this five points are frankly daft.
Anyway, on other matters, he is a still an blogging friend. I will disagree/castigate his decision but not the man.
“At least Ali Eteraz talks to spencer nicely and on topic.”
Not true. He’s quite nasty. Makes fun of his name as Roobert Spencbar or some such. He also refers to in a derogatory fashion as “NYT bestselling author”, etc.
In fact, Spencer just wrote a response solely on that issue titled “Ali Eteraz Argument by Abuse”.
Ron,
“What astonishes me is how few people can just disagree with Dean’s approach without ripping into him.”
I think I’ve been more than patient with “Dean’s approach”. Unfortunately you fail to mention that his approach is to rip into people and lie about what they’ve had to say. Why does that approach deserve the respect that “just disagreeing” would imply? How can one disagree with Dean’s intemperate behavior without “ripping into him”? Too many dilemmas and too little time if you ask me.
BTW, the time posted on my comments is wrong. Right now it is 17:13 or 5:13 pm.
Winds is on some strange time zone, either Greenwich or the fourth plane of Hades or something.
This statement by me was inaccurate, “Makes fun of his name as Roobert Spencbar or some such.” I got him mixed up with Aziz P.