Tuesday, October 25, 2005
we
In these turbolent timese the reading of We by Yevgeny Zamyatin will help us to still believe in the power of creativity and freedom.
a meaningless word
it is amazing that the word Islamophobia has spread so much and it means nothing.
Islamophobia?
From www.danielpipes.org |
Islamophobia?
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
October 25, 2005
An Islamist group named Hizb ut-Tahrir seeks to bring the world under Islamic law and advocates suicide attacks against Israelis. Facing proscription in Great Britain, it opened a clandestine front operation at British universities called "Stop Islamophobia," the Sunday Times has disclosed.
Stop what, you ask?
Coined in Great Britain a decade ago, the neologism Islamophobia was launched in 1996 by a self-proclaimed "Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia." The word literally means "undue fear of Islam" but it is used to mean "prejudice against Muslims" and joins over 500 other phobias spanning virtually every aspect of life.
The term has achieved a degree of linguistic and political acceptance, to the point that the secretary-general of the United Nations presided over a December 2004 conference titled "Confronting Islamophobia" and in May a Council of Europe summit condemned "Islamophobia."
The term presents several problems, however. First, what exactly constitutes an "undue fear of Islam" when Muslims acting in the name of Islam today make up the premier source of worldwide aggression, both verbal and physical, versus non-Muslims and Muslims alike? What, one wonders, is the proper amount of fear?
Second, while prejudice against Muslims certainly exists, "Islamophobia" deceptively conflates two distinct phenomena: fear of Islam and fear of radical Islam. I personally experience this problem: Despite writing again and again against radical Islam the ideology, not Islam the religion, I have been made the runner-up for a mock "Islamophobia Award" in Great Britain, deemed America's "leading Islamophobe," and even called an "Islamophobe Incarnate." (What I really am is an "Islamism-ophobe.")
Third, promoters of the "Islamophobia" concept habitually exaggerate the problem:
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Law enforcement: British Muslims are said to suffer from persistent police discrimination but an actual review of the statistics by Kenan Malik makes mincemeat of this "Islamophobia myth."
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Cultural: Muslims "are faced with an extreme flow of anti-Islamic literature that preaches hatred against Islam," claims the president of the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences in Virginia, Taha Jabir Al-‘Alwani: "novels, movies, books and researches. Just among the best selling novels alone there are almost 1000 novels of this type." One thousand bestsellers vilify Islam? Hardly. In fact, barely a handful do so (for example, The Haj, by Leon Uris).
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Linguistic: A professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, falsely reported (in his keynote speech at a U.N. event, "Confronting Islamophobia," reports Alexander Joffe) attempts to hide the Arabic origins of English words such as adobe – which derives in fact from ancient Egyptian, not from Arabic.
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Historical: The term anti-Semitism was originally used to describe sentiment against Arabs living in Spain, Mr. Nasr also stated in his speech, and was not linked to Jews until after World War II. Nonsense: anti-Semitism dates back only to 1879, when it was coined by Wilhelm Marr, and has always referred specifically to hatred of Jews.
Fourth, Hizb ut-Tahrir's manipulation of "Stop Islamophobia" betrays the fraudulence of this word. As the Sunday Times article explains, "Ostensibly the campaign's goal is to fight anti-Muslim prejudice in the wake of the London bombings," but it quotes Anthony Glees of London's Brunel University to the effect that the real agenda is to spread anti-Semitic, anti-Hindu, anti-Sikh, anti-homosexual, and anti-female attitudes, as well as to foment resentment of Western influence.
Finally, calling moderate Muslims (such as Irshad Manji) Islamophobes betrays this term's aggressiveness. As Charles Moore writes in the Daily Telegraph, moderate Muslims, "frightened of what the Islamists are turning their faith into," are the ones who most fear Islam. (Think of Algeria, Darfur, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan.) "They cannot find the courage and the words to get to grips with the huge problem that confronts Islam in the modern world." Accusations of Islamophobia, Mr. Malik adds, are intended "to silence critics of Islam, or even Muslims fighting for reform of their communities." Another British Muslim, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, discerns an even more ambitious goal: "all too often Islamophobia is used to blackmail society."
Muslims should dispense with this discredited term and instead engage in some earnest introspection. Rather than blame the potential victim for fearing his would-be executioner, they would do better to ponder how Islamists have transformed their faith into an ideology celebrating murder (Al-Qaeda: "You love life, we love death") and develop strategies to redeem their religion by combating this morbid totalitarianism.
From www.danielpipes.org |
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
Howard's thoughts
I welcome with great joy the writing of my good friend Howard. As you can see his text is unedited. The first amendment's power!
Bill Clinton says that he doesn't want anyone to die before his time anymore. Well isn't that nice. I wonder why he didn't take it one step further and add that he doesn't want anyone ever to get sick anymore. These are the kind of remarks that really resonate with the useful idiots on the left. The social engineering liberal idiots that are ensconced in their make believe ivy league world and in Congress. It was that kind of wishful thinking in Europe prior to WWII that cost millions of lives and certain to cost the lives of millions more once again today.
This jovial over sexed dope, our ex-president, along with his scheming wife (don't forget we got two for one with this election) probably, more than any other Americans (with the possible exception of Jimmy Carter and company) through his lack of response to attacks against the U.S. Cole, the African embassies, and the first WTC attack amongst others, are primarily responsible for tearing down our defenses, destroying the CIA and allowing the Muslims to perpetrate their mass murders on 9/11.
Don't be fooled into thinking that these are harmless idealists with lofty ideas whose only crime is that they let their innate "goodness" (they have a virtual monopoly on goodness) cloud their judgment. No, these people are dangerous. They are very dangerous. And because they do not understand the central challenge in the world today---the pure evilness of fundamentalist Islam--- they are putting us in grave and constant danger.
Now we have George Bush who supposedly received some sort of mandate in the last election, but, as yet, with all his pandering to the left and trying to be all things to all people, apparently does not realize that he won last November. He warned Americans recently that there would be an upsurge in violence against the Iraqi people and our military prior to the Iraqi elections on Oct. 15th. That's it? That's our offence? He should be warning the insurgents about an upsurge in violence coming from America and directed towards them.
How do you like this? The barbarians are terrorizing America and the most powerful military in the history of the world. He should be taking out every village the insurgents are using to hide along the Syrian border. And yes I said village. We should be going into every insurgent stronghold wherever it is with aerial attacks not with our fine American boys. They are filtering back into Falujah? Fine. Level Falujah. Follow the Romans. Salt the land. It isn't worth one American casualty.
Iran is sending explosive devices to Iraq and Syria is allowing insurgents to enter Iraq through their porous borders to kill Americans? Aren't these acts of war? Maybe if we sent a cruise missile through Assad's palace he would understand that America frowns on such activity. And isn't it tiring, this back and forth with Iran. You negotiate the price of an automobile not lives. Take out their nuclear capacity now. Tell them that every time we find a "made in Iran" bomb in Iraq they will pay a stiff military price.
This is the only language these maniacs understand. I don't understand why we
are fighting these 5th century barbarians on their terms. What are we saving our technological power for? World War III? I have news flash for George Bush. This is World War III and he had better realize that before it's too late. If it
isn't too late already. Isn't it about time that we started doing some terrorizing of our own? Howard
Bill Clinton says that he doesn't want anyone to die before his time anymore. Well isn't that nice. I wonder why he didn't take it one step further and add that he doesn't want anyone ever to get sick anymore. These are the kind of remarks that really resonate with the useful idiots on the left. The social engineering liberal idiots that are ensconced in their make believe ivy league world and in Congress. It was that kind of wishful thinking in Europe prior to WWII that cost millions of lives and certain to cost the lives of millions more once again today.
This jovial over sexed dope, our ex-president, along with his scheming wife (don't forget we got two for one with this election) probably, more than any other Americans (with the possible exception of Jimmy Carter and company) through his lack of response to attacks against the U.S. Cole, the African embassies, and the first WTC attack amongst others, are primarily responsible for tearing down our defenses, destroying the CIA and allowing the Muslims to perpetrate their mass murders on 9/11.
Don't be fooled into thinking that these are harmless idealists with lofty ideas whose only crime is that they let their innate "goodness" (they have a virtual monopoly on goodness) cloud their judgment. No, these people are dangerous. They are very dangerous. And because they do not understand the central challenge in the world today---the pure evilness of fundamentalist Islam--- they are putting us in grave and constant danger.
Now we have George Bush who supposedly received some sort of mandate in the last election, but, as yet, with all his pandering to the left and trying to be all things to all people, apparently does not realize that he won last November. He warned Americans recently that there would be an upsurge in violence against the Iraqi people and our military prior to the Iraqi elections on Oct. 15th. That's it? That's our offence? He should be warning the insurgents about an upsurge in violence coming from America and directed towards them.
How do you like this? The barbarians are terrorizing America and the most powerful military in the history of the world. He should be taking out every village the insurgents are using to hide along the Syrian border. And yes I said village. We should be going into every insurgent stronghold wherever it is with aerial attacks not with our fine American boys. They are filtering back into Falujah? Fine. Level Falujah. Follow the Romans. Salt the land. It isn't worth one American casualty.
Iran is sending explosive devices to Iraq and Syria is allowing insurgents to enter Iraq through their porous borders to kill Americans? Aren't these acts of war? Maybe if we sent a cruise missile through Assad's palace he would understand that America frowns on such activity. And isn't it tiring, this back and forth with Iran. You negotiate the price of an automobile not lives. Take out their nuclear capacity now. Tell them that every time we find a "made in Iran" bomb in Iraq they will pay a stiff military price.
This is the only language these maniacs understand. I don't understand why we
are fighting these 5th century barbarians on their terms. What are we saving our technological power for? World War III? I have news flash for George Bush. This is World War III and he had better realize that before it's too late. If it
isn't too late already. Isn't it about time that we started doing some terrorizing of our own? Howard
Sunday, August 28, 2005
Thursday, August 18, 2005
Almost 4 years after 9/11, people still don't have the guts to tell the truth about our lethal enemy.
August 17, 2005
A Glimpse of Forces Confronting Saudi Rule
By WILLIAM GRIMES
Western reporting on Saudi Arabia has been in attack mode ever since Sept. 11. Not since the Borgias has a ruling family received such bad press as the House of Saud, and the United States-Saudi connection is probably the one that Americans would most like to sever, if it could be done without raising gasoline prices.
In "Saudi Arabia Exposed," John R. Bradley, a British journalist who spent two and a half years as a newspaper editor and reporter in Saudi Arabia, will not make Americans feel any better about the Saudi royals, whom he calls "perhaps the most corrupt family the world has ever known." But he does provide a highly informed, temperate and understanding account of a country that, he maintains, is an enigma to other Arabs, and even to the Saudis themselves.
The book's accusatory tabloid title does not reflect its tone. "Inside Saudi Arabia" might have been better. Mr. Bradley, although based in Jedda, traveled far and wide throughout the country in an effort to map the regional tensions and cultural distinctions that make Saudi Arabia much more diverse and complicated than the smooth propaganda of its government would allow.
The House of Saud and the religious establishment, fired by the puritanical form of Islam known as Wahhabism , hold sway in the central region, al-Najd; elsewhere rifts and tensions abound. Mr. Bradley's heart is in the Hijaz, and the lingering cosmopolitanism of Jeddah, whose great merchant families tend to take a much more worldly view of politics and religion, including (with one notable exception) the bin Ladens. When the Saudi religious police objected to the use of a plus sign instead of an ampersand in a company's name because it resembled a Christian cross, a writer for the region's main newspaper, Al-Medina, suggested that perhaps the symbol should be replaced with a "tasteful Islamic crescent" in the country's math books.
In the 1920's and 1930's, Ibn Saud created a unified state from the disparate tribes of present-day Saudi Arabia by force, imposing a brand of Islam that, in many areas of the country, is regarded as alien. In Asir, on the border with Yemen in southeastern Saudi Arabia, Wahabbism has been accepted only reluctantly. Mr. Bradley sees women driving pick-up trucks, and in the remote hills he encounters a strange sect known as the flower men, who wear garlands of flowers and herbs and douse themselves in perfume.
In the southwest, Shiites, who constitute a majority, chafe under religious oppression and an official policy intended to convert them to Wahabbism. One official put the matter starkly: "We don't eat their food, we don't intermarry with them, we should not pray for their dead or allow them to be buried in our cemeteries." In April 2000, armed Shiites in Najran rose up against Saudi security forces, and their co-religionists in the Eastern Province, site of huge oil reserves, are also restive.
Saudi Arabia's young people make up another worrying constituency. Mr. Bradley strolls the malls and sits in secluded bedrooms with many disaffected Saudis. Those who travel to the West seem to bring back little more than a degree and a pile of consumer goods. Those who do not travel sit and fester. Waited on hand and foot, they watch satellite television or, using illegal computer cards to bypass the censors, log on to X-rated chat rooms on the Internet. Parents, Mr. Bradley writes, have delegated traditional responsibilities to a despised class of mostly Asian drivers, servants and nannies. As never before, young Saudis have been left to their own devices and easily fall prey to jihadist recruiters.
It comes as a shock to find that Saudi Arabia has something like a gay scene and a nascent feminist movement. In severely repressing all forms of interaction between men and women, the country leaves a large social space open to men, who are free to pursue relations with one another. "I don't feel oppressed at all," one gay man tells the author. "We have more freedom here than straight couples. After all, they can't kiss in public like we can, or stroll down the street holding one another's hands."
Half inch by half inch, the government has been opening the professions to women, who can now obtain commercial licenses and who now account for more than half of the kingdom's university graduates. Since liberal arguments have failed to move the clerical establishment, a new wave of Saudi women have turned to Islam, and Muhammad's earliest teachings, to develop legal ideas that are, so to speak, more fundamental than Wahabbi fundamentalism.
Mr. Bradley tends to leap at the merest glimmer of light. His liberals and reformers, however attractive, hold very weak cards, and the regime has shown itself extraordinarily resistant to change. But modern communications, and the government's grudging baby steps toward democratic reform, he argues, may be the first cracks that, spreading inexorably, could bring down the House of Saud.
Saudis and their tribal leaders have been changed by the oil money that bought their loyalty in the 1970's. Expectations have risen, as well as disillusionment that so few benefited from oil revenues. The war in Iraq, Mr. Bradley argues, "will come back to haunt the Al-Saud." Already, home-grown terrorists have adopted the insurgent tactics being used in Iraq, and battle-hardened Saudi volunteers will eventually return home. Prince Turki bin Khalid, a member of the ruling family, recently bought two apartments in the Time-Warner Center on Columbus Circle in Manhattan for a reported $8.1 million. One is for friends; the other he plans to keep empty. Mr. Bradley has a strong suspicion that he may need it.
A Glimpse of Forces Confronting Saudi Rule
By WILLIAM GRIMES
Western reporting on Saudi Arabia has been in attack mode ever since Sept. 11. Not since the Borgias has a ruling family received such bad press as the House of Saud, and the United States-Saudi connection is probably the one that Americans would most like to sever, if it could be done without raising gasoline prices.
In "Saudi Arabia Exposed," John R. Bradley, a British journalist who spent two and a half years as a newspaper editor and reporter in Saudi Arabia, will not make Americans feel any better about the Saudi royals, whom he calls "perhaps the most corrupt family the world has ever known." But he does provide a highly informed, temperate and understanding account of a country that, he maintains, is an enigma to other Arabs, and even to the Saudis themselves.
The book's accusatory tabloid title does not reflect its tone. "Inside Saudi Arabia" might have been better. Mr. Bradley, although based in Jedda, traveled far and wide throughout the country in an effort to map the regional tensions and cultural distinctions that make Saudi Arabia much more diverse and complicated than the smooth propaganda of its government would allow.
The House of Saud and the religious establishment, fired by the puritanical form of Islam known as Wahhabism , hold sway in the central region, al-Najd; elsewhere rifts and tensions abound. Mr. Bradley's heart is in the Hijaz, and the lingering cosmopolitanism of Jeddah, whose great merchant families tend to take a much more worldly view of politics and religion, including (with one notable exception) the bin Ladens. When the Saudi religious police objected to the use of a plus sign instead of an ampersand in a company's name because it resembled a Christian cross, a writer for the region's main newspaper, Al-Medina, suggested that perhaps the symbol should be replaced with a "tasteful Islamic crescent" in the country's math books.
In the 1920's and 1930's, Ibn Saud created a unified state from the disparate tribes of present-day Saudi Arabia by force, imposing a brand of Islam that, in many areas of the country, is regarded as alien. In Asir, on the border with Yemen in southeastern Saudi Arabia, Wahabbism has been accepted only reluctantly. Mr. Bradley sees women driving pick-up trucks, and in the remote hills he encounters a strange sect known as the flower men, who wear garlands of flowers and herbs and douse themselves in perfume.
In the southwest, Shiites, who constitute a majority, chafe under religious oppression and an official policy intended to convert them to Wahabbism. One official put the matter starkly: "We don't eat their food, we don't intermarry with them, we should not pray for their dead or allow them to be buried in our cemeteries." In April 2000, armed Shiites in Najran rose up against Saudi security forces, and their co-religionists in the Eastern Province, site of huge oil reserves, are also restive.
Saudi Arabia's young people make up another worrying constituency. Mr. Bradley strolls the malls and sits in secluded bedrooms with many disaffected Saudis. Those who travel to the West seem to bring back little more than a degree and a pile of consumer goods. Those who do not travel sit and fester. Waited on hand and foot, they watch satellite television or, using illegal computer cards to bypass the censors, log on to X-rated chat rooms on the Internet. Parents, Mr. Bradley writes, have delegated traditional responsibilities to a despised class of mostly Asian drivers, servants and nannies. As never before, young Saudis have been left to their own devices and easily fall prey to jihadist recruiters.
It comes as a shock to find that Saudi Arabia has something like a gay scene and a nascent feminist movement. In severely repressing all forms of interaction between men and women, the country leaves a large social space open to men, who are free to pursue relations with one another. "I don't feel oppressed at all," one gay man tells the author. "We have more freedom here than straight couples. After all, they can't kiss in public like we can, or stroll down the street holding one another's hands."
Half inch by half inch, the government has been opening the professions to women, who can now obtain commercial licenses and who now account for more than half of the kingdom's university graduates. Since liberal arguments have failed to move the clerical establishment, a new wave of Saudi women have turned to Islam, and Muhammad's earliest teachings, to develop legal ideas that are, so to speak, more fundamental than Wahabbi fundamentalism.
Mr. Bradley tends to leap at the merest glimmer of light. His liberals and reformers, however attractive, hold very weak cards, and the regime has shown itself extraordinarily resistant to change. But modern communications, and the government's grudging baby steps toward democratic reform, he argues, may be the first cracks that, spreading inexorably, could bring down the House of Saud.
Saudis and their tribal leaders have been changed by the oil money that bought their loyalty in the 1970's. Expectations have risen, as well as disillusionment that so few benefited from oil revenues. The war in Iraq, Mr. Bradley argues, "will come back to haunt the Al-Saud." Already, home-grown terrorists have adopted the insurgent tactics being used in Iraq, and battle-hardened Saudi volunteers will eventually return home. Prince Turki bin Khalid, a member of the ruling family, recently bought two apartments in the Time-Warner Center on Columbus Circle in Manhattan for a reported $8.1 million. One is for friends; the other he plans to keep empty. Mr. Bradley has a strong suspicion that he may need it.
Thursday, August 11, 2005
Editorial : There is no clash of civilizations.
For a clash of civilizations to exist, you must have at least two civilizations.
In our historic moment, we have the western civilization with the maximum of achievements and a culture of seventh century with simple minded, repetive and emotional degrading hate for every thing that the Western Civilization has developed:
"I believe that our western civilization is , in spite of all the faults that can quite justifiably be found with it, the most free, the most just, the most humanitarian and the best of all those we have ever known throughout the history of human kind. It is the best because it has the greatest capacity for improvement. … It is only in our western civilization that the moral demand for personal freedom is widely acknowledge and even widely realized, along with the demand for equality before the law, for peace, and for the minimum of force.
This is why I regard our western civilization as the best to date. Of course it is in need of improvement. But, when all is said and done, it is the only civilization in which almost everyone is working together to improve it as much as possible.
Karl Popper
A society without democracy would be inhuman. It would not be a human society, but an ant colony.
The European struggle for freedom against Saudi Arabian Wahhabbi attacks, it not national freedom is personal freedom. Freedom is no mere ideology, but a way of life which make life better and more worth living.
In our historic moment, we have the western civilization with the maximum of achievements and a culture of seventh century with simple minded, repetive and emotional degrading hate for every thing that the Western Civilization has developed:
"I believe that our western civilization is , in spite of all the faults that can quite justifiably be found with it, the most free, the most just, the most humanitarian and the best of all those we have ever known throughout the history of human kind. It is the best because it has the greatest capacity for improvement. … It is only in our western civilization that the moral demand for personal freedom is widely acknowledge and even widely realized, along with the demand for equality before the law, for peace, and for the minimum of force.
This is why I regard our western civilization as the best to date. Of course it is in need of improvement. But, when all is said and done, it is the only civilization in which almost everyone is working together to improve it as much as possible.
Karl Popper
A society without democracy would be inhuman. It would not be a human society, but an ant colony.
The European struggle for freedom against Saudi Arabian Wahhabbi attacks, it not national freedom is personal freedom. Freedom is no mere ideology, but a way of life which make life better and more worth living.
Sunday, August 07, 2005
Locked in a deadly struggle for freedom
Sacred freedom By Ian Buruma Published: August 5 2005 11:07 Last updated: August 5 2005 11:07 From Financial Times
Having lunch with Ayaan Hirsi Ali is not a straightforward affair. Apart from being a Dutch parliamentarian for the VVD (liberal/conservatives), the young Somali-born politician is an activist for women�s rights, especially of Muslim women who are the victims of customs and �honour� codes that Hirsi Ali would like to see abolished. She wrote the script for the polemical short film Submission, directed by Theo van Gogh, who was murdered in November last year by an Islamist fanatic who was sentenced to life in prison last month. Hirsi Ali, Muslim-born and raised and openly critical of the Prophet (a pervert), would have been the killer's preferred target, but since she had been under police protection since 2002, Van Gogh, who refused bodyguards, was probably killed, as it were, faute de mieux.
Hirsi Ali cannot take a step without an entourage of large, sharp-eyed men in sunglasses and suits. When we met in Paris, at the Brasserie de Bourbon - opposite the French parliament where she had just delivered a speech about immigration and integration - some of these men kept an eye on us from outside and some sat down at another table, scanning the joint over bottles of mineral water.
Hirsi Ali, beautiful, slim, black, dressed in a dark skirt and an elegant pink-and-cream jacket, complained about the lack of international co-ordination in security matters. She had to bring her own guards, she said, who didn�t speak French and were not allowed to carry their guns into the parliament building. Long and tedious negotiations were required to get round this �stupid rule - not the best way to fight terrorism�. Few things annoy her more than stupid rules: rules that make the world less safe, rules that stifle enterprise, rules that oppress women.
The other factor that made our lunch less than straightforward was Hirsi Ali�s love of sunlight; we had to keep changing tables and venues. �Oh no,� muttered one of the guards, �not another cafe.� But she was so delighted to be able to walk the streets and sit in cafes - something she cannot do in Holland - that our lunch turned into a moveable feast, ending, appropriately enough, at Hemmingway�s old Left Bank haunt, cafe Les Deux Magots.
Ordering mid-morning coffees, I ask her why Theo van Gogh refused protection. �Theo,� she replies, �was a free spirit and had no high regard for the Dutch police.� Does she? Since her life depends on the men at the next table, this is perhaps an impertinent question. But her answer would not have bothered them. �At the street level, they are very good, but they are underpaid and underappreciated. The top guys, on the other hand, are overpaid, overappreciated and closed to the rest of the world.�
Shivering a little in the morning chill and looking for a sunnier spot, she tells me how lower-ranking Dutch policemen have to prove their diligence by the number of tasks accomplished. It is much easier to hand out parking tickets than, say, to take care of domestic violence in Muslim households, and you get the same pay for it. Bureaucratic hurdles are also daunting; one mistake and you can lose your job. Underpaid, harassed and resentful of their bosses, �it is these kinds of people who end up leaving the big cities. One day people will wake up and say, `Oh, my God, the whole city is black.� And what�s happening in Amsterdam and Rotterdam will happen to the whole country.�
On this note, Hirsi Ali suggests we repair to a warmer spot inside. The men in suits jump up and quickly case the establishment. Hirsi Ali smiles into the noonday sun. We are both Dutch citizens. She moved to The Netherlands 13 years ago, at the age of 22, to escape from an arranged marriage in Canada. I live in New York. Her grandparents were Somali nomads. Mine were from various parts of Europe. We are sitting in a French cafe and for the sake of this article we speak mostly in English, although her Dutch is fluent. A perfect picture of our multicultural world.
I urge her to order something to eat. She says she can�t face a thing yet and orders a second bottle of water. She talks about a Colombian woman in The Hague who started a little neighbourhood restaurant. It was all fine, but for one irritating flaw. When Hirsi Ali ordered a glass of wine, the lady said she couldn�t serve wine. Why ever not? Because she only had one toilet. To serve alcohol you have to have two. That is the rule. Hirsi Ali sighs: �This woman had gone through all the government-sponsored citizenship courses to learn how to become an entrepreneur. And then she has to face these silly rules and regulations. That is why so many Somalis move to the UK, where there are fewer restrictions. They flourish there.�
How about in the US, where she has recently spent time? �I feel more and more at home in New York. You see people of all colours. So many people of colour are successful there. You realise that it is nothing genetic.�
Hirsi Ali finally orders something to eat, a succulent quiche lorraine. We return to the subject of Muslim immigrants and their difficulties in finding their place in European societies. Her own case - from cleaning lady in an asylum shelter to world famous politician in 13 years - is exceptional. Having lived 11 years in Kenya, she spoke perfect English. She was a well-educated young woman when she boarded the train from Germany to The Netherlands. She craved freedom, and lapped it up when she found it. �The way Dutch women talked openly to each other about sex, in great detail. This was extraordinary to me.� She picks at her quiche and observes that Moroccans and Turks stay within their own circles. She doesn�t suffer from that kind of peer pressure. �I have nobody to accuse me of being decadent, westernised, a traitor, a... slut. There�s no one to remind me of my roots all the time. This is good for one�s mindset.�
There are plenty of people who do accuse her of those things and some have even tried to kill her. But they are strangers. Hirsi Ali fought for her place in Dutch society by letting go of her past. This is why she hates people explaining (and sometimes dismissing) her strong views on Islam by referring to her background: her circumcision in Somalia, her family�s exile in Saudi Arabia, her run-ins with Muslim teachers, her forced marriage. These things, she says, �are irrelevant to my argument�. What enrages her is not her private history but the fact that Muslim women �cannot exercise their freedoms in Holland, because their own families continue to practise their cultures and Dutch authorities encourage this by telling people to stick to their own ways�.
The sunlight has shifted. We change tables. The guards take up new positions. The half-eaten quiche is pushed away. Coffees are ordered.
When she was much younger, she was a devout Muslim, who believed that Salman Rushdie deserved to die for insulting the Prophet. Then, at Leyden University, where she read political science, she discovered Karl Popper on the open society, Spinoza on free thinking and Hayek on individualism. As her Muslim beliefs faded, she became an activist. Islam, she often says, needs its own Voltaire. The script she wrote for Theo van Gogh�s film, which features projections of Koranic texts on to the half-naked bodies of veiled women, was conceived in this spirit.
Hirsi Ali�s parents are still devout. Her father, a former politician who was jailed for his opposition to dictatorship in Somalia, still prays for his daughter�s return to the faith. Both her parents support her struggle for women�s rights but they do not believe that female oppression is rooted in Islam. Hirsi Ali disagrees: �If you read the Koran and the Hadith, you see the oppression of women in the text. That was a shock even to me.� Since so much about traditional Islam is incompatible, in her view, with secular, liberal society, drastic measures must be taken. Religious schools should be abolished. The Dutch constitution, which makes provisions for state-funded religious education, should be rewritten. The Dutch state must defend its secularism, like the French Republic. Islam must be reformed.
Before getting into a discussion about the finer points of religious reform, we debate the merits of moving to a pastry shop nearby. Hirsi Ali is basking in the sunlight, like a contented cat. �I feel safer outside Holland,� she says. �Different people, different languages. A false sense of security, I�m sure.�
So how can the faith be reformed? Hirsi Ali has given this a lot of thought. �First of all, we must agree on what is right, what is friendly to human beings. Then you see what is not and you modify everything. On relations between men and women, we must consider the circumstances when the laws were invented and then move on,� she says.
This is all reasonable, which may be part of the problem. Too much reason can reform a faith away, which would be fine with Hirsi Ali, who regards herself as an atheist. �My opponents will say that with my ideas Islam will be like what they have in the west. Sure, I say, but we drive western cars, so why not borrow western ideas. Universal rights were invented here, but are not unique to the west. That is why they are universal.�
With that we decide to move on for a pastry. �Another cafe?� asks the bodyguard. Ayaan Hirsi Ali smiles, delighted with the mere fact of being alive.
Friday, July 22, 2005
Monday, July 18, 2005
let's see the indirect concealment
Blair will say root cause was extremism not Iraq>By Jean Eaglesham>Published: July 18 2005 22:01 Last updated: July 18 2005 22:01>>
Tony Blair will on Tuesday try to persuade Muslim leaders that the root causes of the London attacks lay in warped versions of Islam, rather than political causes such as the war on Iraq.
The distinction is critical because the prime minister hopes to use Tuesday’s meeting with 20 to 30 representatives of the Muslim community to agree action to tackle religious extremists. Such measures are predicated on accepting that religious extremism can pose a threat – an argument some commentators have rejected. Ken Livingstone, the London mayor, has argued the suicide bombings were not caused by “an ideology . . . or even a perverted faith”.
The argument that the attacks were linked to political factors was bolstered on Monday by the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the think-tank, which said the war in Iraq had boosted al-Qaeda. The government’s ability to combat terrorism was hampered by its position as a “pillion passenger” to the US’s war on terror, the Institute said.
The government mounted a concerted effort to reject any such link between its foreign policy and terrorism in the UK. Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, reacted furiously to the think-tank’s report, saying: “The time for excuses for terrorism is over. The terrorists have struck across the world, in countries aligned with the US backing the war in Iraq and in countries which had nothing whatever to do with the war in Iraq.”
Downing Street was scathing about the report, claiming it suggested the UK should ignore threats posed by other states and simply “hope we weren’t attacked”. The prime minister told the cabinet there were people who would blame “anything but faith” for the attacks, his official spokesman said.
Mr Blair told ministers there were “extremists who have a perverse view of Islam who try to use that view to justify events like the London bombings”. Number 10 said it was “simply a statement of fact that in Iraq it is Muslims killing Muslims”.
Tony Blair will on Tuesday try to persuade Muslim leaders that the root causes of the London attacks lay in warped versions of Islam, rather than political causes such as the war on Iraq.
The distinction is critical because the prime minister hopes to use Tuesday’s meeting with 20 to 30 representatives of the Muslim community to agree action to tackle religious extremists. Such measures are predicated on accepting that religious extremism can pose a threat – an argument some commentators have rejected. Ken Livingstone, the London mayor, has argued the suicide bombings were not caused by “an ideology . . . or even a perverted faith”.
The argument that the attacks were linked to political factors was bolstered on Monday by the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the think-tank, which said the war in Iraq had boosted al-Qaeda. The government’s ability to combat terrorism was hampered by its position as a “pillion passenger” to the US’s war on terror, the Institute said.
The government mounted a concerted effort to reject any such link between its foreign policy and terrorism in the UK. Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, reacted furiously to the think-tank’s report, saying: “The time for excuses for terrorism is over. The terrorists have struck across the world, in countries aligned with the US backing the war in Iraq and in countries which had nothing whatever to do with the war in Iraq.”
Downing Street was scathing about the report, claiming it suggested the UK should ignore threats posed by other states and simply “hope we weren’t attacked”. The prime minister told the cabinet there were people who would blame “anything but faith” for the attacks, his official spokesman said.
Mr Blair told ministers there were “extremists who have a perverse view of Islam who try to use that view to justify events like the London bombings”. Number 10 said it was “simply a statement of fact that in Iraq it is Muslims killing Muslims”.
let's read this very carefully
July 12, 2005
Revenge Attacks and Vandalism Unnerve Muslims in Britain
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
BIRKENHEAD, England, July 11 - Muslims all over Britain, in small towns and big cities, are beginning to feel the repercussions of Thursday's terrorist attack on London, confirming widespread concerns that resentment over the bombings would spill over into harassment and violence.
In the span of a few days, at least four mosques across England, including one here, have been either partially set on fire or firebombed, according to police, and others have had their windows smashed and their doors vandalized.
Still others have had racist graffiti scrawled on their walls. In one case, a mosque was hit by bloody pig parts, a particular offense to a religion that eschews eating pork, said Azad Ali, the chairman of the Muslim Safety Forum, which serves as an advisory group for the police and has been tracking incidents from police reports and community groups.
The good news, the police say, is that there has been no major damage nor any serious injuries. But across the country, there have been reports of vandalism of businesses, homes and cars, police say.
Sitting on a downtrodden block of boarded-up shops, the Shahjalal Mosque is no more than a small room off the street, with an apartment above; it is as unassuming as it is popular among Muslims in Wirral, an area just across the Mersey River from Liverpool.
But early Saturday morning, long after the assistant imam upstairs had gone to bed, someone tried to set it afire. The attempt did not succeed, mostly because the fire department responded quickly. But the fire still scorched the front door, smoked out the inside and drove out the imam, who was rescued by firefighters.
Now a police officer patrols outside the tiny mosque, just to be safe. "We are facing two fronts," said a Bengali worshiper at the mosque, who like the other men who came to pray, said he was too fearful to provide his name. "We are facing the terrorists and also the backlash. We were surprised by this. This is a nice community, a small community."
Many mosques now have police officers posted outside, particularly during prayer hours. Others have rejected the offer, fearful of appearing more conspicuous.
People, too, have been attacked and harassed. A Muslim man in London was beaten by two passers-by, according to Mr. Ali. A young boy in Barking, East London, was attacked by a gang. Some bus drivers say they have been spat upon. In a few cases, women say they have been ridiculed and had their hijabs - the head scarves worn by many Muslim women - pulled from their heads.
Lord Nazir Ahmed, the first Muslim to join the House of Lords, said that his title gives him no immunity from the bigotry. Just after stepping outside on Friday with his 85-year-old grandmother and 3-year-old granddaughter, a carload of men slowed down, shouted obscenities at them and made an obscene gesture.
"I did not respond," he said in an interview. "We must have patience. We must report it to the police. But we must not fight back. Under any other circumstances, we would fight back. But not now. We must try to understand the hurt and the pain and not give the opportunity to those thugs."
Racist e-mail messages have poured into the Web site of the Muslim Council of Britain, one of Britain's largest Muslim groups, shutting its system down for a time. One warned, "It's time for war on Muslims throughout Britain."
While acknowledging that many incidents go unreported, most that the police know about have been sporadic, isolated and appear not to be getting worse as days pass, reported the Association of Chief Police Officers of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. "We are encouraged by the overall calm community response, locally and nationally, to these terrible events," said Chris Fox, president of the association. "I am cautiously optimistic that common sense and the best instincts of everyone are prevailing."
The response to the terrorist attacks in London last Thursday has been swift and forceful. Muslim groups and imams have denounced the attacks. On Saturday, 500 imams are expected to issue a fatwa, or religious decree, condemning the bombings, a ruling that will outlaw the bombers whoever they may be by stating that the attacks violated Islamic law, Mr. Ahmed said.
The Muslim Council of Britain has also urged the Muslim community to help the authorities in any way they can. In a letter to the country's imams on Monday, Iqbal Sacranie, the secretary general of the group, said, "It is the duty of all of us to help bring the perpetrators of this tragedy to justice speedily."
Political leaders of all faiths have taken pains to warn Britons not to single out Muslims in their anger, stressing that the overwhelming majority of Britain's Muslims had nothing to do with the bombings and are peaceful, productive citizens.
But in neighborhoods where Muslims have often lived for generations among Christians and Jews, the anxiety, if not downright fear, was obvious. The day of the attack, the Islamic Human Rights Commission took the extraordinary step of advising people to stay indoors.
Since then, Muslims say they have tried to go about their business, but always with a sharp eye. Even in Liverpool and Birkenhead, places where Muslims say they have always felt at home, the mood is vigilant. "We are worried about revenge," said Musa Farah, a Somali worshiper at a mosque in Liverpool. "We are very worried about this mosque."
A few blocks away, Mariam Gulaid, a Somali who has lived in Liverpool for 26 years and wears a hijab, said she is angry about the bombings. But she is also bitter about the jitters she now feels when she walks around with her head covered, or even when she comes home to her house, a stone's throw from a mosque. "It is not just English people who died in the bomb," she said. "They were white, black and Muslim. Everyone suffered."
What looks like a low-level incident on a police report often cuts much deeper in person. In the Yorkshire city of Rotherham, Malik Naeem, a 41-year-old Pakistani man, said he was startled by three loud kicks at his front door on Thursday evening. When Mr. Naeem opened the door, a neighbor, a young man he has known for years, shouted, "You people are killing our innocent people, and I am going to kill you."
Five minutes later he heard a crashing boom. "He threw a full-size brick through my main window," Mr. Naeem said. The police took the man away, but Mr. Naeem said he cannot sleep with worry about the safety of his four children.
"I am at the moment very scared," said Mr. Naeem, who has lived in the neighborhood for nine years. "One thing happened and now I am afraid something will happen again. From my insides, I know it."
Revenge Attacks and Vandalism Unnerve Muslims in Britain
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
BIRKENHEAD, England, July 11 - Muslims all over Britain, in small towns and big cities, are beginning to feel the repercussions of Thursday's terrorist attack on London, confirming widespread concerns that resentment over the bombings would spill over into harassment and violence.
In the span of a few days, at least four mosques across England, including one here, have been either partially set on fire or firebombed, according to police, and others have had their windows smashed and their doors vandalized.
Still others have had racist graffiti scrawled on their walls. In one case, a mosque was hit by bloody pig parts, a particular offense to a religion that eschews eating pork, said Azad Ali, the chairman of the Muslim Safety Forum, which serves as an advisory group for the police and has been tracking incidents from police reports and community groups.
The good news, the police say, is that there has been no major damage nor any serious injuries. But across the country, there have been reports of vandalism of businesses, homes and cars, police say.
Sitting on a downtrodden block of boarded-up shops, the Shahjalal Mosque is no more than a small room off the street, with an apartment above; it is as unassuming as it is popular among Muslims in Wirral, an area just across the Mersey River from Liverpool.
But early Saturday morning, long after the assistant imam upstairs had gone to bed, someone tried to set it afire. The attempt did not succeed, mostly because the fire department responded quickly. But the fire still scorched the front door, smoked out the inside and drove out the imam, who was rescued by firefighters.
Now a police officer patrols outside the tiny mosque, just to be safe. "We are facing two fronts," said a Bengali worshiper at the mosque, who like the other men who came to pray, said he was too fearful to provide his name. "We are facing the terrorists and also the backlash. We were surprised by this. This is a nice community, a small community."
Many mosques now have police officers posted outside, particularly during prayer hours. Others have rejected the offer, fearful of appearing more conspicuous.
People, too, have been attacked and harassed. A Muslim man in London was beaten by two passers-by, according to Mr. Ali. A young boy in Barking, East London, was attacked by a gang. Some bus drivers say they have been spat upon. In a few cases, women say they have been ridiculed and had their hijabs - the head scarves worn by many Muslim women - pulled from their heads.
Lord Nazir Ahmed, the first Muslim to join the House of Lords, said that his title gives him no immunity from the bigotry. Just after stepping outside on Friday with his 85-year-old grandmother and 3-year-old granddaughter, a carload of men slowed down, shouted obscenities at them and made an obscene gesture.
"I did not respond," he said in an interview. "We must have patience. We must report it to the police. But we must not fight back. Under any other circumstances, we would fight back. But not now. We must try to understand the hurt and the pain and not give the opportunity to those thugs."
Racist e-mail messages have poured into the Web site of the Muslim Council of Britain, one of Britain's largest Muslim groups, shutting its system down for a time. One warned, "It's time for war on Muslims throughout Britain."
While acknowledging that many incidents go unreported, most that the police know about have been sporadic, isolated and appear not to be getting worse as days pass, reported the Association of Chief Police Officers of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. "We are encouraged by the overall calm community response, locally and nationally, to these terrible events," said Chris Fox, president of the association. "I am cautiously optimistic that common sense and the best instincts of everyone are prevailing."
The response to the terrorist attacks in London last Thursday has been swift and forceful. Muslim groups and imams have denounced the attacks. On Saturday, 500 imams are expected to issue a fatwa, or religious decree, condemning the bombings, a ruling that will outlaw the bombers whoever they may be by stating that the attacks violated Islamic law, Mr. Ahmed said.
The Muslim Council of Britain has also urged the Muslim community to help the authorities in any way they can. In a letter to the country's imams on Monday, Iqbal Sacranie, the secretary general of the group, said, "It is the duty of all of us to help bring the perpetrators of this tragedy to justice speedily."
Political leaders of all faiths have taken pains to warn Britons not to single out Muslims in their anger, stressing that the overwhelming majority of Britain's Muslims had nothing to do with the bombings and are peaceful, productive citizens.
But in neighborhoods where Muslims have often lived for generations among Christians and Jews, the anxiety, if not downright fear, was obvious. The day of the attack, the Islamic Human Rights Commission took the extraordinary step of advising people to stay indoors.
Since then, Muslims say they have tried to go about their business, but always with a sharp eye. Even in Liverpool and Birkenhead, places where Muslims say they have always felt at home, the mood is vigilant. "We are worried about revenge," said Musa Farah, a Somali worshiper at a mosque in Liverpool. "We are very worried about this mosque."
A few blocks away, Mariam Gulaid, a Somali who has lived in Liverpool for 26 years and wears a hijab, said she is angry about the bombings. But she is also bitter about the jitters she now feels when she walks around with her head covered, or even when she comes home to her house, a stone's throw from a mosque. "It is not just English people who died in the bomb," she said. "They were white, black and Muslim. Everyone suffered."
What looks like a low-level incident on a police report often cuts much deeper in person. In the Yorkshire city of Rotherham, Malik Naeem, a 41-year-old Pakistani man, said he was startled by three loud kicks at his front door on Thursday evening. When Mr. Naeem opened the door, a neighbor, a young man he has known for years, shouted, "You people are killing our innocent people, and I am going to kill you."
Five minutes later he heard a crashing boom. "He threw a full-size brick through my main window," Mr. Naeem said. The police took the man away, but Mr. Naeem said he cannot sleep with worry about the safety of his four children.
"I am at the moment very scared," said Mr. Naeem, who has lived in the neighborhood for nine years. "One thing happened and now I am afraid something will happen again. From my insides, I know it."
an old article that is so new after 7/7
Bush and Europe’s corpse
While in Iraq perhaps a new birth of Freedom is coming, in Europe Freedom is comatose, and the majority of Europeans are even afraid to look at the lethal nature of the enemy. They are playing the ostrich’s game. The last time they played this game Hitler came. The Europeans thought: we are not Jewish, we are not communist. But Hitler came for every body and it was too late, The Americans came, sacrificing millions of young lives and freed the Europeans from the tyranny of Nazi fascism. After 60 years the Europeans are back in their pathetic state. This time with their reckless cocktail (called also politically correctness) of sheer stupidity, sentimentality, denial of reality, feeling good, and always secure the USA will protect them, they have let a more lethal enemy-- if such a thing exists-- than Nazism infiltrate Europe: Islam, this time in one of its worst versions- the Saudi wahhabi salafist. (The other lethal version of Islam is the Iranian Komeneist Shiism.) With the assassination of Theo Agog, the Saudi Wahhabi salafists have destroyed the last residual of cultural freedom in Europe. The defacto abolition of public freedom of expression and behavior is a reality for Europe. Freedom is like pregnancy, you cannot be a little pregnant. Freedom of expression cannot be limited. Europe had lost the freedom that the Americans gave it 60 years ago. The Europeans have reduced freedom of expression and artistic freedom to an empty shell.
In his trip to Europe, Bush, as a good American, projects his conviction of freedom on his Europeans interlocutors. But he can see, he can feel that he is talking to a corpse. Even his best friend, the prime minister of England, is not a Churchill. London, the city of the Magna Carta, has fallen so low that its Mayor is an anti-Semite. Two thirds of the English declare that is not their goal to spread democracy in the world. Britain is terrorized by its Islamic population. Along with Riyadh and Pakistan, London is one of the headquarters of the Saudi Wahhabi Salafist war against the western world. London is the hub of every Islamic militant group; Even al Qaida has a representative and operative in disguise in London. One of the sleaziest, disguised enemies of western civilization is a Saudi Prince who is his country’s ambassador to London- the same man who enthusiastically supported the Taliban. (The Saudi Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and prevention of Vice, the kingdom’s Religious police and one of the twentieth century’s most repugnant institutions, tutored and supported the Taliban as they built up their religious police state.)
Another corpse that Bush met on his trip to Europe is France. Along with other European countries, France refused to label Hezbollah a terrorist organization. Hezbollah is the de facto military vanguard of Khomeini’s Shiite brand, and has killed more American soldiers than any group. And it is a source of the worst anti-Semitic propaganda in Europe. But French intellectuals are not offended by it because they are a pathetic bunch of neo-Cartesians (with a few exceptions): I am anti-American and anti-Semitic therefore I exist. One of the most popular books about 9/11 in France proposes an incredibly farfetched theory about the real authors of 9/11. We can say Malraux does not live in France anymore.
Italy is the exception. Italy is experiencing a spring of freedom, though it might not last for very long. My beloved country has had at least had five years of freedom. As history teaches us, freedom comes from the most unexpected source, from somebody who really believes-- like the Americans-- that freedom is god’s gift to humankind. Though made of “crooked wood”, he freed Italy from forty-five years of suffocating catto-comunismo and gave Italy a taste of freedom from above. Italy’s opposition is just pathetic. It supported Saddam and it has as its main protagonist Bertinotti, who lives not even in the twentieth century, but in the nineteenth. His favorite dictator is that historical relic called Fidel Castro.
It might be a short spring, but at least before I die I can say to my American friends that my country, which gave so much to the world with her art, science, fashion, has experienced a real freedom even if just for few years. My country was the first to understand the nature of the enemy and said it, despite the reaction of the hypocritical Pharisee of political correctness. Now the same Pharisees have to admit that they should know better the history of massacres, rapes, humiliations, committed by Arab and Turkish Muslims in Italy over many centuries. They do not have excuses.
The Americans are struggling to understand the mortal enemy because they did not have any historical familiarity with Islam and because they have ingrained respect for every form of religion. Now, slowly but surely, they are trying to understand the version of Islam that wants to destroy them and the civilized world. The Saudi Wahhabi Salafists is something that has to be dealt with. Of course there are still many American elite under the spell of Saudi Arabia’s subtle propaganda, which has intensified lately. As Saudi Arabian ambassador Bandar said after 9//11. “My problem is John Six Packs now”. John Six Packs does not believe, unlike former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, that the religion of Saudi Arabia is a noble religion. A noble religion does not behead people, does not consider women intrisically inferior to men, does not consider them chattels, and does not legislate that it is not a crime to kill non believers, women or children. John Six Packs is not so gullible and he cannot be bought like the rest of the elite.
Bush acquires clarity through knowledge. The strength of the Americans comes from a real struggle to get to the facts and the only thing that they never resist is the facts. And they get the fact that the mullahs of Tehran if they have nuclear weapons they will use them. Bush understands the repugnancy of the nature of the Tehran regime. He was forceful when he told the Europeans that Tehran can not have nuclear weapons. The European corpse cannot understand him, because, what the Americans do not realize is that freedom is not in the dna\ of the majority of Europeans, especially the new generation. Some Europeans over fifty remember that freedom was given to them by the Americans. Germany Italy France (the Vichy republic anyone?) other Nazi occupied countries were freed by the Americans and after the war America took care to protect such freedoms from the Soviet Union. A great American president demanded that Gorbachov tear down the Berlin wall. The pusillanimous Germans tried to compromise with the Soviet Union and East Germany. They do not know how to fight for their freedom. Freedom is not a value for them.
Also the generation born after 1964 grew up with a Catholic Church that, realizing that its temporal power was over and under the menace of communism, decided that the concept of democracy was to be part of its social doctrine, first with the encyclical “Pacem in terris”, and then in 1964, during the Second Vatican Council with Gaudium et Spes. The wing of the church that was defeated by the anti Jewish wing during Constantine’s reign in 325, was able to return after seventeen centuries. What it found was a young Jewish man preaching the love of humanity and love for one’s enemy. Therefore we had an ecumenical opening and several instances of asking for forgiveness.
Unfortunately for humanity, in 1973 the most lethal, hateful version of Islam controlled the largest reserve of petroleum and became extremely wealthy. A geographical accident and the western elite’s ignorance(only Churchill in the 1930 understood the dangerousness of this brand of Islam) spread Saudi Wahhabi salafists around the world and created and imposed in the major history departments of Europe the myth of the great Arab Muslim Civilization. The infiltration of Europe was facilitated by the Catholic Church, which with the new spirit of ecumenism gave even her churches to be transformed into mosques. Wahhabi intends to take Islam back to its origins. Instead of finding a man teaching love for humanity, they found a ruthless warrior and conqueror, creator of the first fascist state (to use modern terminology). He linked his power with the power of a merciless God who would destroy all infidels.
This is why we find ourselves in an awkward and dangerous situation today. The origins and founder of Christianity and the origins and founder of Islam are as different as day and night. With the Second Vatican Council, the relations between Christianity and Judaism returned to what they were before Chrisostomos invented the terrible epithet Christ Killers. The relations between Christianity and Judaism went back to the Christian thought that recognized that without Judaism there can be no Christianity. There is a continuum not a confrontation between the two and one does not exclude the other.
On the other hand, an investigation of Islam’s origins finds that its founder appropriated 90 per cent of the Judeo-christian bible, but declares himself the last and true prophet. A young sophisticated Muslim in her book “The trouble with Islam” describes her disappointment” and anger when she found out that the majority of the Qu’ran was taken from the bible. In the madrasas it is forbidden to talk about the historical roots of the Qu’ran. Even the US State Department, traditionally pro-Arab, agreed that Saudi Arabia is one of the most anti-Semitic countries in the world.
Christians apologized for what they did; the Pope went to Israel to ask for forgiveness. Saudi Arabia and Arab Muslims, except for Jordan, are among the most rabid deniers of the Holocaust and propagandists of the fake Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Saudi Wahhabi safalists forbid Muslims to integrate into the Western world and order them to develop an attitude of superiority to and hatred for infidels. After forty years, Saudi Wahhabi Salafist infiltrators are now in a position to intimidate and kill Europeans, applying the sharia (Islamic Law).
The western European generations since 1964 do not know how to fight for their freedom because freedom was a gift and was not part of their culture. These generations did not grow up fighting tolerance with tolerance and intolerance with intolerance. This generation does not understand the profound value of freedom. Living in freedom without fear is the essence of life. These generations elected the European parliament of full of brainless people: the majority of them, in a mindless act of political, cultural suicide, voted to open negotiations for the entrance of Turkey into the European Union. Turkey does not cover up that she wants to conquer Europe, destroy it as we know it. The country that sent one of her “children” to kill the Pope. A country that, in the name of Allah, committed the genocide of one and a half million Christian Armenians, and more than eight decades later still it does not have the decency to ask for forgiveness. Because a Muslim country, as a muslim, considers itself perfect, superior to infidels and thus cannot make a mistake. The infidel Armenian Christians deserved to die.
This is the attitude of the people whom the majority of the European Parliament voted to admit into the European Union. Beside the fact that Turkey economically will not bring any vantage to Europe, but Turkey will be only a draining force of money from Europe, money that will be used to destroy and impose her Islamic law to the rest of Europe. Turkey is a country, which still in the phase of the negotiating, it already demands and refuses to recognize a legitimate member of European Union., How many members of the European Union will Turkey expel when she will be member?
This corpse of Europe Bush came to ask to work with him for freedom. Bush did realize that the freedom, for which the greatest generation of the American gave their life, does not live in Europe. Europe went back were she always was .But perhaps Bush deep inside understands that the creation of the United States was brought about because free men in the colonies of the English empire decided to create something completely new and based on the freedom of the people for the people by the people, while Europe remains the antidote as Tom Paine said about the English monarchy the most corrupt institutions that the earth has seen, personally and historically. Even the monarchy is not changed. The pathetic, cheap, scandalous life of the heir to the throne that at 56 is not yet grown up and screams at his mistress, future his wife; I want to be your tampon. It shows there is no difference between the behavior of English royal family and the behavior of the participants of a Jerry Springer Show. It is still a mystery for many to understand the protest against B.B.C for the showing of Springer Opera. The Springer Opera is dwarfed by the dysfunctional royal family of England. At least, nobody shows up in Springer Opera dressed like a Nazi and nobody at Springer Opera and Springer Show had friendship with Hitler (former King Edward) and nobody on Springer Opera and Springer Show searches for his identity in a tampon. The dysfunctionality gets dangerous for some added member of the family. The young princess Diana who completely unaware (basically no too smart and narcissistic) of the historic realty of England threaten to destroy the essence of the British state marrying a Muslim. The answer of the state was swift.
This Britain is part of the corpse of Europe that now wants to help the mortal enemy of Israel, because it wants to show that still has power and influences events. In reality Britain is not aware that is just a hit man for the Saudi Wahhabi Salafist. They want to put so much pressure on Israel that can put in jeopardy the security of Israel. If Britain has power why does it demand from the Arabs countries to recognize Israel, before everything else?
Bush went to visit Germany. After 60 years still part of the Germany has an unconscious fascination for dictators. Hitler was taken away from them by the Americans. Not even near the end, the Germans did fight against Hitler. In the last days of Hitler a German woman murdered her six children because she cannot stand to see their children in a world without the fuehrer. The new Nazi party is a new German creation that will not go underestimated. At least, the so-called Italian resistance, not too much in itself, but at least it was able to kill Mussolini and hang him upside down with his mistress in piazza del Duomo in Milano. Why do we be surprised of German fight against the war against the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein., with hypocritely pious excuses: to be against the war? The Germans are not Quakers, and they never were, and never will be. To pretend to be pacifist and protest against the president of United States is easy and scott free. What about to protest against the Saudi Arabian spreading in Germany and in the rest of Europe the most lurid anti-Semitism. You cannot be against the war without wanting to keep in power a brutal dictator not a Hitler but a good copy. Not for nothing the mosques in Germany are controlled by the Saudi Wahhabi and the German government does nothing to stop the venom and the ignominious anti-Semitism coming every Friday from the many mosques in every part of Germany. Let’s do not forget the murderers of 911 were from Hamburg. Is it an unconsciunc vigorous function that the rabid Saudi Wahhabi preachers complete for the German people? Legitimate question.
The only thing left for a European, [when he was young realized that real freedom was not Europe. [ Nemo dat what not habet]., and who was lucky enough to come to the land of the real freedom,] is to look at the corpse of Europe with no illusion, with acceptance, crying in his heart, but with the consolation that he will died before that Europe, so loved, will be brutally destroyed by the Saudi wahhabi Islam. Freedom, as Charlie Brown would say, is something that you fight for every day of your life. The Europeans [except for a small minority from every walk of life] cannot fight for their real freedom, because they do not know what it is. And nobody will teach them what it is because they have the arrogance of the ignorance, disguised as intellectual phony snobbery.
Perhaps a small part of the new generation listening a president of the United States where freedom is not rhetoric but is a policy that everybody, every day, struggles to implement in his personal, political and cultural life, will start to fight back against Saudi Wahhabi Salafis domination of Europe and its coward European enablers.
Was not Ugo Foscolo, who wrote Ode to America, who also wrote” la speranza e’ l’ultima a lasciare i sepolcri”? [Hope is last to leave the tombs]
While in Iraq perhaps a new birth of Freedom is coming, in Europe Freedom is comatose, and the majority of Europeans are even afraid to look at the lethal nature of the enemy. They are playing the ostrich’s game. The last time they played this game Hitler came. The Europeans thought: we are not Jewish, we are not communist. But Hitler came for every body and it was too late, The Americans came, sacrificing millions of young lives and freed the Europeans from the tyranny of Nazi fascism. After 60 years the Europeans are back in their pathetic state. This time with their reckless cocktail (called also politically correctness) of sheer stupidity, sentimentality, denial of reality, feeling good, and always secure the USA will protect them, they have let a more lethal enemy-- if such a thing exists-- than Nazism infiltrate Europe: Islam, this time in one of its worst versions- the Saudi wahhabi salafist. (The other lethal version of Islam is the Iranian Komeneist Shiism.) With the assassination of Theo Agog, the Saudi Wahhabi salafists have destroyed the last residual of cultural freedom in Europe. The defacto abolition of public freedom of expression and behavior is a reality for Europe. Freedom is like pregnancy, you cannot be a little pregnant. Freedom of expression cannot be limited. Europe had lost the freedom that the Americans gave it 60 years ago. The Europeans have reduced freedom of expression and artistic freedom to an empty shell.
In his trip to Europe, Bush, as a good American, projects his conviction of freedom on his Europeans interlocutors. But he can see, he can feel that he is talking to a corpse. Even his best friend, the prime minister of England, is not a Churchill. London, the city of the Magna Carta, has fallen so low that its Mayor is an anti-Semite. Two thirds of the English declare that is not their goal to spread democracy in the world. Britain is terrorized by its Islamic population. Along with Riyadh and Pakistan, London is one of the headquarters of the Saudi Wahhabi Salafist war against the western world. London is the hub of every Islamic militant group; Even al Qaida has a representative and operative in disguise in London. One of the sleaziest, disguised enemies of western civilization is a Saudi Prince who is his country’s ambassador to London- the same man who enthusiastically supported the Taliban. (The Saudi Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and prevention of Vice, the kingdom’s Religious police and one of the twentieth century’s most repugnant institutions, tutored and supported the Taliban as they built up their religious police state.)
Another corpse that Bush met on his trip to Europe is France. Along with other European countries, France refused to label Hezbollah a terrorist organization. Hezbollah is the de facto military vanguard of Khomeini’s Shiite brand, and has killed more American soldiers than any group. And it is a source of the worst anti-Semitic propaganda in Europe. But French intellectuals are not offended by it because they are a pathetic bunch of neo-Cartesians (with a few exceptions): I am anti-American and anti-Semitic therefore I exist. One of the most popular books about 9/11 in France proposes an incredibly farfetched theory about the real authors of 9/11. We can say Malraux does not live in France anymore.
Italy is the exception. Italy is experiencing a spring of freedom, though it might not last for very long. My beloved country has had at least had five years of freedom. As history teaches us, freedom comes from the most unexpected source, from somebody who really believes-- like the Americans-- that freedom is god’s gift to humankind. Though made of “crooked wood”, he freed Italy from forty-five years of suffocating catto-comunismo and gave Italy a taste of freedom from above. Italy’s opposition is just pathetic. It supported Saddam and it has as its main protagonist Bertinotti, who lives not even in the twentieth century, but in the nineteenth. His favorite dictator is that historical relic called Fidel Castro.
It might be a short spring, but at least before I die I can say to my American friends that my country, which gave so much to the world with her art, science, fashion, has experienced a real freedom even if just for few years. My country was the first to understand the nature of the enemy and said it, despite the reaction of the hypocritical Pharisee of political correctness. Now the same Pharisees have to admit that they should know better the history of massacres, rapes, humiliations, committed by Arab and Turkish Muslims in Italy over many centuries. They do not have excuses.
The Americans are struggling to understand the mortal enemy because they did not have any historical familiarity with Islam and because they have ingrained respect for every form of religion. Now, slowly but surely, they are trying to understand the version of Islam that wants to destroy them and the civilized world. The Saudi Wahhabi Salafists is something that has to be dealt with. Of course there are still many American elite under the spell of Saudi Arabia’s subtle propaganda, which has intensified lately. As Saudi Arabian ambassador Bandar said after 9//11. “My problem is John Six Packs now”. John Six Packs does not believe, unlike former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, that the religion of Saudi Arabia is a noble religion. A noble religion does not behead people, does not consider women intrisically inferior to men, does not consider them chattels, and does not legislate that it is not a crime to kill non believers, women or children. John Six Packs is not so gullible and he cannot be bought like the rest of the elite.
Bush acquires clarity through knowledge. The strength of the Americans comes from a real struggle to get to the facts and the only thing that they never resist is the facts. And they get the fact that the mullahs of Tehran if they have nuclear weapons they will use them. Bush understands the repugnancy of the nature of the Tehran regime. He was forceful when he told the Europeans that Tehran can not have nuclear weapons. The European corpse cannot understand him, because, what the Americans do not realize is that freedom is not in the dna\ of the majority of Europeans, especially the new generation. Some Europeans over fifty remember that freedom was given to them by the Americans. Germany Italy France (the Vichy republic anyone?) other Nazi occupied countries were freed by the Americans and after the war America took care to protect such freedoms from the Soviet Union. A great American president demanded that Gorbachov tear down the Berlin wall. The pusillanimous Germans tried to compromise with the Soviet Union and East Germany. They do not know how to fight for their freedom. Freedom is not a value for them.
Also the generation born after 1964 grew up with a Catholic Church that, realizing that its temporal power was over and under the menace of communism, decided that the concept of democracy was to be part of its social doctrine, first with the encyclical “Pacem in terris”, and then in 1964, during the Second Vatican Council with Gaudium et Spes. The wing of the church that was defeated by the anti Jewish wing during Constantine’s reign in 325, was able to return after seventeen centuries. What it found was a young Jewish man preaching the love of humanity and love for one’s enemy. Therefore we had an ecumenical opening and several instances of asking for forgiveness.
Unfortunately for humanity, in 1973 the most lethal, hateful version of Islam controlled the largest reserve of petroleum and became extremely wealthy. A geographical accident and the western elite’s ignorance(only Churchill in the 1930 understood the dangerousness of this brand of Islam) spread Saudi Wahhabi salafists around the world and created and imposed in the major history departments of Europe the myth of the great Arab Muslim Civilization. The infiltration of Europe was facilitated by the Catholic Church, which with the new spirit of ecumenism gave even her churches to be transformed into mosques. Wahhabi intends to take Islam back to its origins. Instead of finding a man teaching love for humanity, they found a ruthless warrior and conqueror, creator of the first fascist state (to use modern terminology). He linked his power with the power of a merciless God who would destroy all infidels.
This is why we find ourselves in an awkward and dangerous situation today. The origins and founder of Christianity and the origins and founder of Islam are as different as day and night. With the Second Vatican Council, the relations between Christianity and Judaism returned to what they were before Chrisostomos invented the terrible epithet Christ Killers. The relations between Christianity and Judaism went back to the Christian thought that recognized that without Judaism there can be no Christianity. There is a continuum not a confrontation between the two and one does not exclude the other.
On the other hand, an investigation of Islam’s origins finds that its founder appropriated 90 per cent of the Judeo-christian bible, but declares himself the last and true prophet. A young sophisticated Muslim in her book “The trouble with Islam” describes her disappointment” and anger when she found out that the majority of the Qu’ran was taken from the bible. In the madrasas it is forbidden to talk about the historical roots of the Qu’ran. Even the US State Department, traditionally pro-Arab, agreed that Saudi Arabia is one of the most anti-Semitic countries in the world.
Christians apologized for what they did; the Pope went to Israel to ask for forgiveness. Saudi Arabia and Arab Muslims, except for Jordan, are among the most rabid deniers of the Holocaust and propagandists of the fake Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Saudi Wahhabi safalists forbid Muslims to integrate into the Western world and order them to develop an attitude of superiority to and hatred for infidels. After forty years, Saudi Wahhabi Salafist infiltrators are now in a position to intimidate and kill Europeans, applying the sharia (Islamic Law).
The western European generations since 1964 do not know how to fight for their freedom because freedom was a gift and was not part of their culture. These generations did not grow up fighting tolerance with tolerance and intolerance with intolerance. This generation does not understand the profound value of freedom. Living in freedom without fear is the essence of life. These generations elected the European parliament of full of brainless people: the majority of them, in a mindless act of political, cultural suicide, voted to open negotiations for the entrance of Turkey into the European Union. Turkey does not cover up that she wants to conquer Europe, destroy it as we know it. The country that sent one of her “children” to kill the Pope. A country that, in the name of Allah, committed the genocide of one and a half million Christian Armenians, and more than eight decades later still it does not have the decency to ask for forgiveness. Because a Muslim country, as a muslim, considers itself perfect, superior to infidels and thus cannot make a mistake. The infidel Armenian Christians deserved to die.
This is the attitude of the people whom the majority of the European Parliament voted to admit into the European Union. Beside the fact that Turkey economically will not bring any vantage to Europe, but Turkey will be only a draining force of money from Europe, money that will be used to destroy and impose her Islamic law to the rest of Europe. Turkey is a country, which still in the phase of the negotiating, it already demands and refuses to recognize a legitimate member of European Union., How many members of the European Union will Turkey expel when she will be member?
This corpse of Europe Bush came to ask to work with him for freedom. Bush did realize that the freedom, for which the greatest generation of the American gave their life, does not live in Europe. Europe went back were she always was .But perhaps Bush deep inside understands that the creation of the United States was brought about because free men in the colonies of the English empire decided to create something completely new and based on the freedom of the people for the people by the people, while Europe remains the antidote as Tom Paine said about the English monarchy the most corrupt institutions that the earth has seen, personally and historically. Even the monarchy is not changed. The pathetic, cheap, scandalous life of the heir to the throne that at 56 is not yet grown up and screams at his mistress, future his wife; I want to be your tampon. It shows there is no difference between the behavior of English royal family and the behavior of the participants of a Jerry Springer Show. It is still a mystery for many to understand the protest against B.B.C for the showing of Springer Opera. The Springer Opera is dwarfed by the dysfunctional royal family of England. At least, nobody shows up in Springer Opera dressed like a Nazi and nobody at Springer Opera and Springer Show had friendship with Hitler (former King Edward) and nobody on Springer Opera and Springer Show searches for his identity in a tampon. The dysfunctionality gets dangerous for some added member of the family. The young princess Diana who completely unaware (basically no too smart and narcissistic) of the historic realty of England threaten to destroy the essence of the British state marrying a Muslim. The answer of the state was swift.
This Britain is part of the corpse of Europe that now wants to help the mortal enemy of Israel, because it wants to show that still has power and influences events. In reality Britain is not aware that is just a hit man for the Saudi Wahhabi Salafist. They want to put so much pressure on Israel that can put in jeopardy the security of Israel. If Britain has power why does it demand from the Arabs countries to recognize Israel, before everything else?
Bush went to visit Germany. After 60 years still part of the Germany has an unconscious fascination for dictators. Hitler was taken away from them by the Americans. Not even near the end, the Germans did fight against Hitler. In the last days of Hitler a German woman murdered her six children because she cannot stand to see their children in a world without the fuehrer. The new Nazi party is a new German creation that will not go underestimated. At least, the so-called Italian resistance, not too much in itself, but at least it was able to kill Mussolini and hang him upside down with his mistress in piazza del Duomo in Milano. Why do we be surprised of German fight against the war against the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein., with hypocritely pious excuses: to be against the war? The Germans are not Quakers, and they never were, and never will be. To pretend to be pacifist and protest against the president of United States is easy and scott free. What about to protest against the Saudi Arabian spreading in Germany and in the rest of Europe the most lurid anti-Semitism. You cannot be against the war without wanting to keep in power a brutal dictator not a Hitler but a good copy. Not for nothing the mosques in Germany are controlled by the Saudi Wahhabi and the German government does nothing to stop the venom and the ignominious anti-Semitism coming every Friday from the many mosques in every part of Germany. Let’s do not forget the murderers of 911 were from Hamburg. Is it an unconsciunc vigorous function that the rabid Saudi Wahhabi preachers complete for the German people? Legitimate question.
The only thing left for a European, [when he was young realized that real freedom was not Europe. [ Nemo dat what not habet]., and who was lucky enough to come to the land of the real freedom,] is to look at the corpse of Europe with no illusion, with acceptance, crying in his heart, but with the consolation that he will died before that Europe, so loved, will be brutally destroyed by the Saudi wahhabi Islam. Freedom, as Charlie Brown would say, is something that you fight for every day of your life. The Europeans [except for a small minority from every walk of life] cannot fight for their real freedom, because they do not know what it is. And nobody will teach them what it is because they have the arrogance of the ignorance, disguised as intellectual phony snobbery.
Perhaps a small part of the new generation listening a president of the United States where freedom is not rhetoric but is a policy that everybody, every day, struggles to implement in his personal, political and cultural life, will start to fight back against Saudi Wahhabi Salafis domination of Europe and its coward European enablers.
Was not Ugo Foscolo, who wrote Ode to America, who also wrote” la speranza e’ l’ultima a lasciare i sepolcri”? [Hope is last to leave the tombs]
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
FZline's book review
This is an excellent book to know the real nature of the islamic war. It is completely different from the western concept of war. It is better for every body to start to understand this profound difference, because the consequences of overlooking these differences are very painful and dangerous for our security.
India and Pakistan's Code of Dishonor
I like to bring to your attention this couragous article of Salman Rushdie.
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
A new poem by Sappho
Martin West is an Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He is the translator of the Oxford World's Classics Greek Lyric Poetry,1999. Martin West in the issue The Times Literary Supplement June 24,2005 p.8 translates the discovered poem of Sappho. He writes " The poem is a small masterpiece: simple, comcise. perfectly formed, an honest, unpretentious expression of human feeling, dignified in its restraint . It moves both by what it leaves unspoken. It gives us no ground for thinking that Sappho's poetic reputation wa unreserved.
[ You for] the fragrant-bosomed [Muses'] lovely gifts
[be zeakous,] girls, [and the] clear melodious lyre:
[but my once tender] body old age now
[has seized;] my hair's turned[white] instead of dark;
my heart's grown heavy, my knees will not support me,
that once on a time were fleet for the dance as fawns.
This state I oft bemoan; but what's to do
Not to grow old, being human, there 's no way.
Tithonus once, the tale was, rose-armed Dawn,
love-smitten, carried off to the world's end,
handsome and young then, yet in time grey age
o'ertook him, husband of immortal wife.
TLS has the greek text.
FZline invites to read the classics. Their so close to us.
[ You for] the fragrant-bosomed [Muses'] lovely gifts
[be zeakous,] girls, [and the] clear melodious lyre:
[but my once tender] body old age now
[has seized;] my hair's turned[white] instead of dark;
my heart's grown heavy, my knees will not support me,
that once on a time were fleet for the dance as fawns.
This state I oft bemoan; but what's to do
Not to grow old, being human, there 's no way.
Tithonus once, the tale was, rose-armed Dawn,
love-smitten, carried off to the world's end,
handsome and young then, yet in time grey age
o'ertook him, husband of immortal wife.
TLS has the greek text.
FZline invites to read the classics. Their so close to us.
Friday, June 24, 2005
Carmen Bin Ladin's quotations from FT
CBL" I would like to talk to you first as mother of three daughters, who had to fight very hard to give them the freedom she thought they deserved, to talk about my life and experiences in Saudi Arabia, and my decision that I had to take my daughters to the free world"
CBL" A woman has no rights. Saudi men keep the children after divorce."
CBL: " If I am worried about the future, it is because my experience of Saudi Arabia made me understand that no matter how open-minded[the Saudis] want us to believe they are, there is much that is ingrained. For years the relationships between the bin ladens and the Saudi royal family has been very strong through business and friendship; it is difficult to believe all there have rejected Osama"
CBL:" Saudi women are the Taliban in Luxury"
from Everything is relative by Nina-Anne Kaye F.T.
CBL" A woman has no rights. Saudi men keep the children after divorce."
CBL: " If I am worried about the future, it is because my experience of Saudi Arabia made me understand that no matter how open-minded[the Saudis] want us to believe they are, there is much that is ingrained. For years the relationships between the bin ladens and the Saudi royal family has been very strong through business and friendship; it is difficult to believe all there have rejected Osama"
CBL:" Saudi women are the Taliban in Luxury"
from Everything is relative by Nina-Anne Kaye F.T.
fzline's best sellers
The end of Faith: religion, terror, and the future of reason by Sam Harris wwNorton 2004
Harris argues that "fondamentalism" is a faulty system; so flawed that it endagers its adherents and everyone else. It is dangerous because it is hermetic. Suppose someone from 7th or 14century were brought back to modern society: he would be an idiot, in nearly every way. "His beliefs about geography, astronomy and medicine would embaress even a child, but he would know more or less everything there is to know God. Religion , for Harris is not a branch of knowledge but a body of dogma that pretends to tell us something about the world.
Harris identifys Islam as a belief system in love with death, and in using the Sunny philosopher
Sayyid Qutb( who denounced Jews for their "craven desire to live") as an illustration
Harris states that even socially progressive religion privileges faith, creating an environment within which fanticism can blossom; he states that the totalirarian regimes that rejected organized religion were nonetheless so irrational that they qualify as perverted religions.( North Korea, for example, is a "cargo cult"). The key Harris 's statement is that reason is open to debate and argument, where faith is impervious.
Harris makes his case pugnaciously and for long stretches compellingly, but he does not answer the basic question :Why religion?
Harris argues that "fondamentalism" is a faulty system; so flawed that it endagers its adherents and everyone else. It is dangerous because it is hermetic. Suppose someone from 7th or 14century were brought back to modern society: he would be an idiot, in nearly every way. "His beliefs about geography, astronomy and medicine would embaress even a child, but he would know more or less everything there is to know God. Religion , for Harris is not a branch of knowledge but a body of dogma that pretends to tell us something about the world.
Harris identifys Islam as a belief system in love with death, and in using the Sunny philosopher
Sayyid Qutb( who denounced Jews for their "craven desire to live") as an illustration
Harris states that even socially progressive religion privileges faith, creating an environment within which fanticism can blossom; he states that the totalirarian regimes that rejected organized religion were nonetheless so irrational that they qualify as perverted religions.( North Korea, for example, is a "cargo cult"). The key Harris 's statement is that reason is open to debate and argument, where faith is impervious.
Harris makes his case pugnaciously and for long stretches compellingly, but he does not answer the basic question :Why religion?
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Comic philosopher Illustrated
I suggest to all my friends lovers of New york and philosophy this great book:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/12/books/review/12SIMICL.html
OPEC
In the NYT article about OPEC. Found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/14/business/worldbusiness/14opec.html?
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Saudi Arabia
Every day the most fundamental human rights of people living in Saudi Arabia are violated, yet rarely is this fact publicized. The Saudi Arabian government spares no effort to keep its appalling human rights record a secret, and other governments have shown themselves more than willing to help maintain the secrecy.
Secrecy and fear permeate every aspect of the state structure in Saudi Arabia. There are no political parties, no elections, no independent legislature, no trades unions, no Bar Association, no independent judiciary, no independent human rights organizations. The government allows no international human rights organizations to carry out research in the country and it ignores requests by such organizations for information. It has effective control over all kinds of information: there is strict censorship of media within the country and strict control of access to the Internet, satellite television and other forms of communication with the outside world. Anyone living in Saudi Arabia who criticizes this system is harshly punished. After arrest, political and religious opponents of the government are detained indefinitely without trial or are imprisoned after grossly unfair trials. Torture is endemic. Executions, flogging and amputations are imposed and carried out with disregard for the most basic international fair trial standards.
Secrecy and fear permeate every aspect of the state structure in Saudi Arabia. There are no political parties, no elections, no independent legislature, no trades unions, no Bar Association, no independent judiciary, no independent human rights organizations. The government allows no international human rights organizations to carry out research in the country and it ignores requests by such organizations for information. It has effective control over all kinds of information: there is strict censorship of media within the country and strict control of access to the Internet, satellite television and other forms of communication with the outside world. Anyone living in Saudi Arabia who criticizes this system is harshly punished. After arrest, political and religious opponents of the government are detained indefinitely without trial or are imprisoned after grossly unfair trials. Torture is endemic. Executions, flogging and amputations are imposed and carried out with disregard for the most basic international fair trial standards.
Monday, June 06, 2005
The usual misinformed : the people
Reading the reactions and comments of Europe's political and cultural elite after the clear non and nien of France and the Netherlands to the so-called European Constitution, you realized the elite's arrogance.
The most arrogant was the editorial in Il Corriere Della Sera written by an ex European bureaucrat and former European Commissioner, Mario Monti. His thesis is cheap and demeaning : only people not informed will vote no. It is the most idiotic and cowardly excuse. To invoke such a excuse shows Monti's lack of intellect and complete disregard of of every democratic principle . When people do not vote the way we want them to, they are stupid or, to be patronizing, misinformed. Monti is syntomatic of the European elite. With such an elite, Europe cannot go far. But the "misinformed people" left such leaders behind.
It never occurred to Monti that perhaps if you want to create a political entity among the twenty-five countries of the European Union the best way to do it is to let every citizen elect the members of the constitutional assembly directly. Such a legitimately elected assembly will write a constitution that will surely be ratified by the electorate.
If the majority of the political and cultural European elite is truly distressed by the results of the referendum, instead of whining and insulting the electorate, it would be better to go back to the drawing board and elect the members of the constitutional assembly by a primary method. During the campaign the candidates would be forced to confront different constitutional visions of Europe. The primary campaign would be extremely participatory and, at the same time, a learning experience for the people of the twenty-five countries. Second, the Constitutional Assembly members would have six months to compose a constitution, which has to be for shortness and clarity based on the American and Swiss models, including a clear Bill of Rights. The actual elite is so brainless and so, to use strong words, intellectually f..up that is incapable of using the democratic method and therefore it is necessary to wait for a younger generation, which grew up in a more effective democratic world. The European Elite is completely out to lunch. What do you expect from an elite that choose Romano Prodi as president of the European Commission. Give the European people a break .
The other reaction : the Moroni reaction to "go back to the lira"is idiotic and dangerous from a financial point of view. In the petty mind of the Lega perhaps it is better to go back to the village and return to barter. By selecting a minister like Moroni, Italy shows that is not ready for a strong democratic Europe.
The most arrogant was the editorial in Il Corriere Della Sera written by an ex European bureaucrat and former European Commissioner, Mario Monti. His thesis is cheap and demeaning : only people not informed will vote no. It is the most idiotic and cowardly excuse. To invoke such a excuse shows Monti's lack of intellect and complete disregard of of every democratic principle . When people do not vote the way we want them to, they are stupid or, to be patronizing, misinformed. Monti is syntomatic of the European elite. With such an elite, Europe cannot go far. But the "misinformed people" left such leaders behind.
It never occurred to Monti that perhaps if you want to create a political entity among the twenty-five countries of the European Union the best way to do it is to let every citizen elect the members of the constitutional assembly directly. Such a legitimately elected assembly will write a constitution that will surely be ratified by the electorate.
If the majority of the political and cultural European elite is truly distressed by the results of the referendum, instead of whining and insulting the electorate, it would be better to go back to the drawing board and elect the members of the constitutional assembly by a primary method. During the campaign the candidates would be forced to confront different constitutional visions of Europe. The primary campaign would be extremely participatory and, at the same time, a learning experience for the people of the twenty-five countries. Second, the Constitutional Assembly members would have six months to compose a constitution, which has to be for shortness and clarity based on the American and Swiss models, including a clear Bill of Rights. The actual elite is so brainless and so, to use strong words, intellectually f..up that is incapable of using the democratic method and therefore it is necessary to wait for a younger generation, which grew up in a more effective democratic world. The European Elite is completely out to lunch. What do you expect from an elite that choose Romano Prodi as president of the European Commission. Give the European people a break .
The other reaction : the Moroni reaction to "go back to the lira"is idiotic and dangerous from a financial point of view. In the petty mind of the Lega perhaps it is better to go back to the village and return to barter. By selecting a minister like Moroni, Italy shows that is not ready for a strong democratic Europe.
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Viva the Dutch
CNN just reported that the Dutch rejected the so called European constitution 63% to 37%, a positive step forward in the defense of free speech in western civilization. The vote represents a desire to stop the infiltration of people who, in the long run, will destroy our civilization of freedom of thought and research. We are not intimidated by assassination. Theo Van Gogh did not die in vain. We can reverse this wave of people who want to destroy our way of living. They are afraid to be free and want to impose on everybody their farfetched story. Thank you Dutch people. Let's not be afraid to say we are proud of our freedom, which in the last two centuries we have worked so hard to achieve. It reminds me of what a great Italian poet said : La speranza e' l'ultima a lasciare le tombe. If we believe in the power of freedom, Van Gogh's killers will not destroy it, but we have to do every thing in our power not to feed the beast with appeasement . The European political elite has to be ashamed of its behavior toward the major protagonist of the spread of anti-European venom, the Saudi Arabian regime.
Hillary's quotation
We, as a city, a state and a nation, must continue to keep faith with the promise of higher education.
Senator Hillary Clinton told the CUNY Graduates these words. She also said that New York is the Beacon of freedom. And most important, she denounced the "people who have somehow tapped into the divine and therefore can tell the rest of us how to believe and how to live."
The tragedy with higher education in the United States is that the people who have tapped into the divine and therefore can tell the rest of us how to believe and how to live' are controlling Middle East studies, transforming them into propaganda machines. A disturbing example is the disastrous and unacceptable situation of Columbia University, where scholars of the middle east are a joke, where pure propagandists are disguised as historians, anthropologists, where the president is a confused intellectual, who does not distinguish between academic freedom, which means to be free to research and publish your research, and propaganda against the only democracy in the middle east, where the majority of the academic Senate voted against RTO on the campus because of the military's policy "don't ask, don't tell". This is the same academic senate that protects and defends professors who consider homosexuality a crime (see Saudi Arabia), that supports professors who call the only democratic state in the Middle East racist, coveringt up the most racist and xenophobic state, Saudi Arabia. How can such an academic senate speak for higher education? Nemo dat, quod non habet Nobody can give something that he does not have.
What is the board of Columbia university doing? Does the board have the obligation to hire scholars and not propagandists? How do the parents of the students accept such an aberrant situation? How can the parents send their daughters and sons to a University whose professors have somehow tapped into the divine and therefore can brainwash the students, telling them how to believe and how to live?
Senator Hillary Clinton told the CUNY Graduates these words. She also said that New York is the Beacon of freedom. And most important, she denounced the "people who have somehow tapped into the divine and therefore can tell the rest of us how to believe and how to live."
The tragedy with higher education in the United States is that the people who have tapped into the divine and therefore can tell the rest of us how to believe and how to live' are controlling Middle East studies, transforming them into propaganda machines. A disturbing example is the disastrous and unacceptable situation of Columbia University, where scholars of the middle east are a joke, where pure propagandists are disguised as historians, anthropologists, where the president is a confused intellectual, who does not distinguish between academic freedom, which means to be free to research and publish your research, and propaganda against the only democracy in the middle east, where the majority of the academic Senate voted against RTO on the campus because of the military's policy "don't ask, don't tell". This is the same academic senate that protects and defends professors who consider homosexuality a crime (see Saudi Arabia), that supports professors who call the only democratic state in the Middle East racist, coveringt up the most racist and xenophobic state, Saudi Arabia. How can such an academic senate speak for higher education? Nemo dat, quod non habet Nobody can give something that he does not have.
What is the board of Columbia university doing? Does the board have the obligation to hire scholars and not propagandists? How do the parents of the students accept such an aberrant situation? How can the parents send their daughters and sons to a University whose professors have somehow tapped into the divine and therefore can brainwash the students, telling them how to believe and how to live?
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
The day after memorial day
Victory is the complete knowledge of the enemy.
It is scaring that almost 4 years after 9/11 we still insist, and especially the political and media elite, forget about the academic elite it is completely out for lunch, to refuse to recognize the nature of the enemy.
Despite the quasi universal denial of the enemy, sometimes something happens: in Europe good news : the French, forget about the motivation of the non vote to The Treaty of the Constitution of Europe, objectively helped for now to postpone the entrance of Turkey in Europe. Of course the so called constitution of Europe was an aberration of artificiality. The brain less European elite wants to impose 495 pages of regulations on a living continent as Europe. They do not realize the history of humanity is history of freedom. They forgot that one Soviet Union with its commissioners was enough. If they really want have a constitution for Europe, they have to go back to the drawing board. The first item on the board is the election, after a ample campaign, of members of constitutional assembly directly from the people.
The basic principle of every democracy is an authentic principle of representation. It is still valid that "taxation without representation" is a no no. "Constitution without representation" it is still a no no.
The second item on the board is what the supreme court justice of United States told a journalist, who asked him what was so special about the constitution of United States: "first of all it is short".
Constitutional law 101: the constitution has to be written by legitimately elected representative of the people, not appointees by governments.
A real political unification comes after a cultural integration is happened . To achieve it the actual members have to spend energies and money in cultural integration. They have to create compulsory language program since the elementary in every member state, without shared languages, will be no political desire for political unification. In the beginning of 21st century, Europe do not have a decent European TV, not even a c-span. The translation of books is so low among members states that is at level of cultural indecency. Without a real net of communication there will not be political convention.
The trouble with the elite of to day Europe is that in order to produce a great constitution like the one of the United State, we have to have political Geniuses like Jefferson , Madison, Hamilton , Adams, Franklin etc .Political geniuses created a system that can be run by Idiots. Sometimes, in history of the United State literally idiots were in control ( think about Carter and his answer to Komeinei and the consequences of that answer that lasted until 9/11, but the "Republic was Kept".
In Europe, we have now idiots who produced a Constitution that the "genius" of the people have the courage to stop, before such product of idiocy will destroy what is still left of the living European Continent.
It is scaring that almost 4 years after 9/11 we still insist, and especially the political and media elite, forget about the academic elite it is completely out for lunch, to refuse to recognize the nature of the enemy.
Despite the quasi universal denial of the enemy, sometimes something happens: in Europe good news : the French, forget about the motivation of the non vote to The Treaty of the Constitution of Europe, objectively helped for now to postpone the entrance of Turkey in Europe. Of course the so called constitution of Europe was an aberration of artificiality. The brain less European elite wants to impose 495 pages of regulations on a living continent as Europe. They do not realize the history of humanity is history of freedom. They forgot that one Soviet Union with its commissioners was enough. If they really want have a constitution for Europe, they have to go back to the drawing board. The first item on the board is the election, after a ample campaign, of members of constitutional assembly directly from the people.
The basic principle of every democracy is an authentic principle of representation. It is still valid that "taxation without representation" is a no no. "Constitution without representation" it is still a no no.
The second item on the board is what the supreme court justice of United States told a journalist, who asked him what was so special about the constitution of United States: "first of all it is short".
Constitutional law 101: the constitution has to be written by legitimately elected representative of the people, not appointees by governments.
A real political unification comes after a cultural integration is happened . To achieve it the actual members have to spend energies and money in cultural integration. They have to create compulsory language program since the elementary in every member state, without shared languages, will be no political desire for political unification. In the beginning of 21st century, Europe do not have a decent European TV, not even a c-span. The translation of books is so low among members states that is at level of cultural indecency. Without a real net of communication there will not be political convention.
The trouble with the elite of to day Europe is that in order to produce a great constitution like the one of the United State, we have to have political Geniuses like Jefferson , Madison, Hamilton , Adams, Franklin etc .Political geniuses created a system that can be run by Idiots. Sometimes, in history of the United State literally idiots were in control ( think about Carter and his answer to Komeinei and the consequences of that answer that lasted until 9/11, but the "Republic was Kept".
In Europe, we have now idiots who produced a Constitution that the "genius" of the people have the courage to stop, before such product of idiocy will destroy what is still left of the living European Continent.
Friday, May 27, 2005
Get a life : Paris Hilton
The reaction of the so called conservative or family oriented organizations to the last Paris Hilton commercial shows that they do not have anything better to do. What about trying to convince former mayor Giuliani to come back to family values. A republican with three marriages and two divorces. Is he a poster child for family values? And lets not talk about hypocrisy, or the republican mayor of Spokane. The conservatives have so much work to do in their own house and I am sure they rembember what the gospel said "who is without sin throw the first stone". And beside every thing, get a life and enjoy the beautiful curves of Paris Hilton, who by the way is as American as apple pie. A good conservative has to love everything that is American.
Saturday, May 21, 2005
Poetry : leopardi
Gaicomo LEOPARDI (1798-1837)
L’ Infinito
translated by Andrea Grover pg3@nyu.edu
This solitary hill has always been dear to me
And this hedge, that keeps so much
Of the horizon from view.
But pausing and contemplating, I create from my thoughts
Interminable spaces beyond that, and superhuman
Silences, and the most profound calm;
Almost frightening to me. But when I
Hear the wind rustling through these plants, I start comparing
That infinite silence to this sound: and I am reminded of eternity,
And seasons past, the present
And living one, and the sound of it. Thus amidst this
Vastness my thoughts drown;
And it is sweet to be shipwrecked in this sea.
L’ Infinito
translated by Andrea Grover pg3@nyu.edu
This solitary hill has always been dear to me
And this hedge, that keeps so much
Of the horizon from view.
But pausing and contemplating, I create from my thoughts
Interminable spaces beyond that, and superhuman
Silences, and the most profound calm;
Almost frightening to me. But when I
Hear the wind rustling through these plants, I start comparing
That infinite silence to this sound: and I am reminded of eternity,
And seasons past, the present
And living one, and the sound of it. Thus amidst this
Vastness my thoughts drown;
And it is sweet to be shipwrecked in this sea.
Friday, May 20, 2005
Do not read Bs
- 90 % of books published are an insult to intelligence is their prerogative. Reading is like eating. You have to develop a taste and you acquire taste only eating good food. If you used to eat meatball and overcooked spaghetti, you will never know what is tasty food. in order to dismantle the bad taste reinforced by reading lousy reviews you start reading book like ON BULLSHIT by professor Harry G. Frankfurt, Princeton University Press,2005 .After reading this book, you realized how much bs is around you.
- You will be stronger to distinguish between bs and real thinking. Do not worry if at the beginning it will be not easy.
- After Frankfurt book you can read the book of Jonathan Rauch, Kindly inquisitor. After, let me know.
Thursday, May 19, 2005
The beauty of the meaningless of life
Life is meaningless. This is its beauty. Everybody can put meaning in his life. Life becomes so interesting if every day, every hour, every minute you put your meaning in your life. Do not accept the farfetched story that other people are eager to sell you as the meaning in your life. When you start to accept their meaning, you start to give up your life and you become a prisoner and suddenly life starts to be sad. With their farfecheted story, they want to destroy your joy of life by commanding and forbidding, by taking away from you the joy of freedom of knowledge. Pursue your meaning through science, experience, daring and free thinking. Never accept any statement without solid evidence. By putting your own meaning in your life, you will never be a victim of charlatans and bullshitters of every age and culture. You will be stronger and will never experience illusion or disillusion. Disillusion is illusion. Between illusion and disillusion is your reality with your meaning. Do not let anybody define you.
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Monday, March 28, 2005
The case the Saudis can't make.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2537-2005Mar26.html
This is one article that every optimist should read.
This is one article that every optimist should read.
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