There is, it turns out, a serious problem of domestic terrorism in the U.S., but it’s not the kind that typically receives attention or concern.
This week in the United States:
This is just from the last week: It does not include the spate of similar and even worse attacks on Muslims and mosques in the U.S. prior to December 8, such the multiple gunshots fired at a Connecticut mosque in the wake of the November Paris attack, or the bullet-ridden Quran left outside an Islamic store in Anaheim in the wake of the San Bernardino shootings. Nor does it include the large number of similar incidents outside the U.S. but in the West, such as the attack on a 22-year-old Muslim woman riding on a bus last week in Birmingham, England, or the vandalization of a mosque in Townsville, Australia, yesterday, or the removal of Muslims from public transportation both in the U.S. and U.K. Nor does it include cases where the cause is not yet known, such as the death last week of a 16-year-old Seattle Muslim student who either fell or was thrown from a roof.
Three weeks ago, CAIR revealed that it “has received more reports about acts of Islamophobic discrimination, intimidation, threats, and violence targeting American Muslims (or those perceived to be Muslim) and Islamic institutions in the past week-and-a-half than during any other limited period of time since the 9/11 terror attacks.” As CNN’s Ben Brumfield reported earlier this week, “Xenophobic bile has poured out against peaceful, law-abiding Americans who practice Islam.” CNN’s religion reporter Daniel Burke yesterday wrote that 2015 “has been one of the most intensely anti-Muslim periods in American history.”
There are numerous causes, most of them obvious: 14 years of nonstop war waged by the U.S. and its allies in predominantly Western countries; the U.S. media’s mainstreaming of anti-Muslim polemicists; the bile unleashed and legitimized by the Trump campaign; the vile and deeply irresponsible rhetoric coming from U.S. politicians such as Democratic Rep. (and Senate candidate) Loretta Sanchez of California; the attempts to exploit attacks in Paris and San Bernardino for long-standing agendas designed to demonize Muslims and Islam. But whatever the causes, just imagine what it’s like to be an American Muslim living under these threats and attacks.
These sentiments are by no means universal and there are some positive stories of Americans pushing back. Some anonymous non-Muslims are leaving notes of support at their local mosques and Islamic community centers. Jeff Flake, the conservative GOP Mormon senator from Arizona, attended a prayer service last night at a Scottsdale mosque and vehemently condemned anti-Muslim rhetoric. Some conservative figures are eloquently denouncing the emerging anti-Muslim bile.
But all of that is being drowned by these growing and deeply menacing trends aimed at American Muslims. The events speak for themselves. There is, it turns out, a serious problem of domestic terrorism in the U.S., but it’s not the kind that typically receives attention or concern.
Credit to the anti-Islamophobia activist Imraan Siddiqi for coverage of many of these stories.
It is not called “sabotage”. It is called we have “improved our site” in order to capture its “artistic essence”, make it more “social-media”, “user tracking” friendly …
We can’t tell you mere posting mortal for “National Security reasons” or, wait, was it “business reasons”, or what was it exactly?
Anyway, whatever it is you don’t want to know because if we tell you we will have to kill you.
TI
TI, are you lifting any fingers to explain the sabotaged comment reply function?
It like a slow motion Kristallncht.
The way the conservative media treats the issue has the same tone of the minutes of Wannsee Conference. We haven’t got past “Black lists” and “Internment camps”
In essence, President Obama gave the ok for avenging the Muslims when he stirred up the white supremacist mad mobs in his duplicitous speech of December, 6 2015.
In the wake of the San Bernardino false flag, the duplicitous nature of president Obama’s shameful fork-tongued speech was equal to himself. With absolutely no reverence for his own father’s religion, he said with one side of his face that Americans must engage the Muslims in this country in the fight against terror and with the other side of his face, he said that it is the responsibility for the Muslim community to “root out misguided ideas that lead to radicalization”, thereby, reinforcing in the public mind that Muslims follow a religion embedded with radical beliefs. Nonsense! I take offense to his diabolical hypocritical propaganda tactics. However, whether Obama realizes it or not, he is setting up Muslims for mass slaughter. It reminds me of the time when the white man invited the Pequots to dinner and then turned around and burned down their villages and massacred every man, woman, and child they could get their hands on with their superior firearms and machetes. I believe that Obama’s words were another call to arms because in the aftermath of the killings in California, a surge in the buying of AK 47’s resulted. Those angry white men who are not terrorists, God forbid, but are merely “angry” men, couldn’t wait to get their hands on their new weapons. Most of the Christmas sales went to buying the kinds of guns meant for killing people. Merry Christmas! Who will these guns be aimed at? Muslims, yes Muslims.
Obama sounded like Bush when he promised the American people that he would bomb ISIS with more intensity, thereby slaughtering more Muslims. The government realizes that it is so easy to influence the weak-minded, no critical thinking skills masses.
quite a bit ironic for more than one reason that they are buying AK-47s in mass. Isn’t it?
RCL
Clearly these Americans were possessed by the Christmas spirit during this holiday season.
There’s a lot of tension during these times. Its supposed to be happy and magical. But since your participation in holiday rituals in America is dependent on the money you have to spend, the gifts you buy (or nothing you would call sacred – religious or not) the ritual becomes an obstacle for participation.
Some people don’t have it or find that ritual utterly meaningless – no matter how much they want to feel otherwise. So they’re cast out of the community if not also cast out of family celebration during a time that is supposed to be a time of a togetherness, good deeds etc. Not everyone has a positive way of dealing with that.
The right wing media gods tell us that you’re not supposed to collectively respect anything considered sacred, (religious or not -more important than you) other than what they tell you to respect and how ( summarized as ridicule and punish anything that challenges their view or is different) That kinda kills those feel good holiday moments.
Part of how a community protects what is important and private to a diverse group of people that is America (or who you live with and where) is considered PC. But crushing PC or political opponents has been advertised as a way to ensure “real” Americans will retake America or they can be happy again with a magical times during December. whew! but its not working.
What to do? Muslims are being attacked and blamed as the cause for why anyone listening feels miserable and devoid of feeling. But Islam and the left existed when they and their parents were children during Christmas before. What about all of those lovely memories? What’s different now?
I’ll add that we should all have sympathy or even take a moment of silence for the people who work in retail or any people that are forced to listen to Christmas music and the attempts at variations ALL DAY LONG
Lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNFMPhKIZXg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72cnEPVw29I
They’re unhinged and just pouring out of the woodwork now. Of course, most of them are Jesus freaks of some sort. When I was a kid we called them holy rollers. You remember, that weird-ass congregation across the river that kept to itself and sang off key until three o’clock in the morning. These knuckleheads have been lying in wait and it was just a matter of time before shit like this started happening. These truly are salad days for neophyte racists and seasoned bigots alike.
Dem
My Reply button does not work.
I am an agnostic.
I believe that most people who subscribe to one religion or another, do so because of the religion that prevailed and was subscribed to and practiced, by their parents, their community and nation at the time and place of their birth. As newborns, they often have no choice.
Retention, embrace and acceptance of one’s birth religion later in life as an adult, is a function of social pressures, degree of spiritual relevance of religion in one’s personal life, as well as of other individual choices.
All religions teach love, and all uphold ideals that embody the best of humanity.
The trouble comes when politics and religion come in conflict. I cannot expand on this…would take a book a thousand fold thicker than the bible.
The freedom to love all unconditionally and without hesitation, for me as an agnostic, is the best of all religions.
Why don’t we just treat each other as human beings? “If someone need religion to be good, then that person is not good, is like a trained dog.” ~ Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche
I don’t have to imagine. I and my people are Black Americans.
THE HORROR! THE HORROR!
THE EVIL!
@Gator90
My Reply button does not work.
“Query: Why is it that the term “white trash” exists, but the term “black trash” does not? ”
I suppose there is a presumption by those who use the phrase, that “white thrash” is a subset of all whites.
If this is true, then the absence of the phrase “black thrash”may be attributable to an assumption that all blacks are thrash.
@Nate
My Reply button is not working.
Thank you for reading my documentation. Read it again. And again.
This is most important. Continue reading more technical, professional and educational stuff that has more value than the local supermarket cigarette specials that you normally read and study intensely.
Take an entry level course in Neuroscience and learn how human physiology is manipulated through algorithms that are intimately tied to the brain code.
And take Tombrowns to the book store or university library with you for company. Birds of a feather…
It will help you not to appear and sound so profoundly ignorant.
@Tombrowns
My Reply button is not working.
“Leaving aside the cause or causes, what you describe is similar to having anxiety and experiencing acid reflux.”
3 things in reply to your words in quite above:
a) ‘ Leaving aside the cause ‘ is obviously what you prefer whereas my highlighting the cause – as the exogenous and unnatural phenomenon that it is – is precisely what the torturers pray I would NOT do. So you certainly have company. To each his own.
b) Acid reflux as is currently understood does not require input from sources exogenous to the human body – other than certain foods and an incompetent lower esophageal sphincter – to be triggered. Whilst triggering it unnaturally may yield the same result as normal acid reflux, it is not natural acid reflux as we understand it when it arises out of manipulation of physiological systems through somatic surveillance.
a) This is most important. Try to read something more meaningful than the National Enquirer. Or your local supermarket cigarette specials. Take an entry level course in Neuroscience and learn how human physiology is manipulated through algorithms that are intimately tied to the brain code.
It will help you not to appear and sound so pathetically ignorant.
I would like to make a small correction here Glenn. War against Muslim counties has raging for atleast since the oil was discovered there. If you look at individual Muslim counties you be amazed how many ways and tactics have used to silence or some time forcefully convert people away from their culture as well as religion. Cici of egypt is an obvious example but what is not so obvious is places like Pakistan. Where a society is being built from scratch to treat Islam as an Optional thing. Convert the whole society into consumers. Military has taken over the county in a very sneaky way. There is a civilian government there but Army is holding all of their nuts in their secure safe. I see the same thing happening in Nigeria. People of a country have the right to governor themselves. It is a very basic right that Western governments are denying the whole world for last 5 centuries.
Often times the only way that anti muslim crime is reported is if there is there is some sort of positive feel good spin. Usually only outrage against islamophobia is reported, and never islamophobia directly. The opposite is true with negative news about Muslims, which are reported directly and Muslim outrage against that negative news is not. This has somewhat changed recently after the comment that Donald Trump made and some space is given to Muslims to say that they are against terrorism and that they are not all the same.
I am waiting for:
“Klan members criticise Hijab for not being pointy and anonymous enough”
“Klan members criticise Muslims for not hating Jews enough”
“Klan members criticise Muslims for not being polygamous with members of their own families”
I grew up, poor, largely in a long series of “trailer courts” around the US.
I spent much of my childhood and youth trying to avoid the ignorant ( I thought, then, “evil”) creeps in each and every new school who mocked and taunted me by hurling insults like “white trash.”
When I couldn’t avoid them, when I was backed into a corner, I fought back with totally unrestrained fury — with hands, feet and any weapon that was handy. By 5th grade, I always carried a knife.
I regard the expression “white trash” as hate speech in the same class as nigger, kike, raghead, etc.
I would fight vigorously against any government attempt to ban such speech, other than in “fighting words” or “hate crime” contexts (maybe), but if anyone used it in my living room, I’d throw his or her ass out of my house, using whatever force was necessary if s/he didn’t go quietly.
“White trash” is an interesting expression. I always thought it was racist, but more against black people than white people. Query: Why is it that the term “white trash” exists, but the term “black trash” does not?
Yes, it is indeed based on racist attitudes against black people. Which is one of the reasons it is used in a disparaging way against poor whites.
Easy answer: The people who coined the term “white trash” believed that black people are naturally and inherently “trash” — so there is no “need” for a similar term to apply to blacks. And, of course, there are so many other derogatory terms for blacks.
That’s what I thought. You express it well.
Sweden’s prosecutors are apparently back from their extended holiday, and are prepared to question Assange:
Still no word on whether Sweden and the UK would rather send Assange to America for a lynching.
This is so funny, it’s taken years for the Swedish prosecutor to question Assange because…”one of her staff was ill”.
Rhetorical nitwittery. When Muslims kill .5 million in the US because someone else starts a war against Muslims, let me know.
@tombrown:
“{snip]
The utterly miserable thought strikes me that Russell Brand just might have been right. What difference did my vote make? Why indeed do people vote, and care so passionately about voting, particularly in constituencies in which voting one way or the other won’t make a blind bit of difference? And why do the poor vote when, by voting, they merely give legitimacy to a system that connives with their oppression and alienation? The anthropologist Mukulika Banerjee suggests a fascinating answer: elections are like religious rituals, often devoid of rational purpose or efficacy for the individual participant, but full of symbolic meaning. They are the nearest thing the secular has to the sacred, presenting a moment of empowerment.
[snip]”
Voting in the US will never serve any purpose other than serving up their country for as long as the credulous fools opt for The Party instead of ignoring it as they form their own parties.
Same is true for those who put on a uniform for a paycheck and the excitement of meeting new people and killing them in the millions.
In the USA, serving up country is what voters and offensive warriors always do.
Thanks for the reply.
I agree.
You look to yourself for a while and try to get some peace. I use to go 4 days without sleep. It wears you down. I held a belief that I was under spiritual attack.
The three stages of possession are obsession, oppression and then possession. That will appear as strange to those who show you no compassion, for your intereption of what you are going through. But the pain and agony is real enough no matter the cause.
I wish you well.
Cheers jimmy.
Downloaded Puffin and this particular reply link works! But I haven’t visited settings to block js, popups, tracking, keyboard override, etc., so do not know if I can spell again, yet. I guess surveillance goons have somehing else on their plate and another lame salary justification. Project Puffin?
I do not know who you are, Jimmy, and Stasi targets cannot trust anyone but the vetted.
But I will tell you I know exactly what is going on and Jesus does not have a GD thing to to do with it. Religious fundamentalist Nazis in Texas — mom, sis, bro, bro in law — collaborated with US, and by transitive association, vassal Stasi organizations to commit slow murder across many years and three continents. Southern Baptist Nazi sis screamed “kill him!” repeatedly since 2000 and patriotic F-15 pilot hubby went squealing to Nazi friends in USAF. US Stasi had been watching me since the early 80s anyway. You might be able to guess what follows from disowning bloodthirsty morons in Texas within 72 hours of the December 2000 coup. Same “family” members issued death threats, but Stasi goon squads have carried most of the country saving burden with tried and true DDR Zersetzung methods and physical torture. Like I said, it’s a totalitarian freak show and the fun never stops.
What did I win? Self respect, complete separation from monster patriots, knowledge that I actually do have civil courage and courage of my convictions, and not least, evidence beyond all reasonable doubt that I am not one of them.
I would do it again, and twenty years sooner.
Cheers,
Stan
And Jimmy, your credibility on this subject might be enhanced by ditching references to acid reflux and all things spiritual.
The problem is temporal.
The problem’s correct name is American Totalitarian Fascism.
Cheers
Okay. Credibility comes from within, not from without.
I was not suggesting you are me, I was only sharing my experience. I do not say that I am right.
I am aware of the weapons used by the TPTB. Ever considered the possibility that two things are connected. America could well be the great Satan and use weapons.
I honestly do not know why somethings happen, I only know that it is real.
Keep being real and who can beat you.
Well, the last thing I remember before I stripped and kneeled
Was that trainload of fools bogged down in a magnetic field
https://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/senor-tales-yankee-power
Senor (Tales Of Yankee Power)
Señor, señor, do you know where we’re headin’?
Lincoln County Road or Armageddon?
Seems like I been down this way before
Is there any truth in that, señor?
Señor, señor, do you know where she is hidin’?
How long are we gonna be ridin’?
How long must I keep my eyes glued to the door?
Will there be any comfort there, señor?
There’s a wicked wind still blowin’ on that upper deck
There’s an iron cross still hangin’ down from around her neck
There’s a marchin’ band still playin’ in that vacant lot
Where she held me in her arms one time and said, “Forget me not”
Señor, señor, I can see that painted wagon
I can smell the tail of the dragon
Can’t stand the suspense anymore
Can you tell me who to contact here, señor?
Well, the last thing I remember before I stripped and kneeled
Was that trainload of fools bogged down in a magnetic field
A gypsy with a broken flag and a flashing ring
Said, “Son, this ain’t a dream no more, it’s the real thing”
Señor, señor, you know their hearts is as hard as leather
Well, give me a minute, let me get it together
I just gotta pick myself up off the floor
I’m ready when you are, señor
Señor, señor, let’s disconnect these cables
Overturn these tables
This place don’t make sense to me no more
Can you tell me what we’re waiting for, señor?
— “Keep being real and who can beat you.” That is very ambiguous. And I didn’t care much for Dylan’s Christian thang. Wasted my money on it when it was released.
I have no idea whether you are potential friend and ally or misdirecting enemy. This is the world the Stasi Five Eyes has created; I cannot and will not apologize for getting you wrong. If you are authentic you’ll understand. And given the millions of dollars and rodent-hours spent on trying to beat me down I also forgive my own arrogance. Somebody’s got to do it ;-)
Tchau, Senhor.
DIsabled reply link now affecting second iOS device connected to same fully compromised router.
At first I thought the 1st affected iOS device was in its death throes, as it was swiped from my hands to the floor by a rental goon who did not like being legally filmed in a public space in CA. (In CA, you can legally film goons as long as the microphone is disabled. Ironically, stalking is illegal in CA, but stalkers are the law, not merely beyond its reach.)
Now, 2nd iOS device cannot use reply button on this site, with JavaScript and tracking “disabled”, as it work. Wether the NSA, FBI, CIA (I am in Brazil now, under CIA jurisidiction), or “just bidness, nothing personal” at the behest of this site’s owners is hehind this deviousness, the perps are all cut from the same soiled cloth — it’s a totalitarian freak show all ’round.
Ugh. Puffin == Flash. Off it goes.
Nevertheless, Puffin is by far the fastest browser on my iPad 2, and the Latest and Reply buttons work in it.
The fastest… and hyperlinks actually work! No doubt Flash based browsers are also the surveillance goons’ favorite. Coincidence?
Remember all the ‘blocked terrorist attacks’ that get trotted out to justify the spying on America’s citizens of Muslim orientation, mass surveillance, and the suspension of rights? And how they mostly seem to consist of an ‘informant’ who did a lot (if not all) of the ‘radicalizing’, planning of attacks, provision of weapons etc. Now, imagine one of these informants were targeting a family, and had facilitated them obtaining guns (which had to be functional because they’d be fired at gun ranges as the targets trained themselves in how to use them) and maybe some bomb components (which could be non functional because the informant would call for the bust to take place as soon as he could get the targets on tape agreeing to carry out an attack), though most likely just training on how to make (nonfunctional) bombs, but the targets never would agree to carry out such an attack. Now imagine that something other than the informant pushed the targets over the edge, in a way where the targets, rather than planning an attack with their friend the informant just gathered up the legally owned guns, used the knowledge (and maybe components) that informant had provided to hurry together a few bombs (duds) and shot up those who’d (inadvertently and unknowingly) sent the targets over the edge. How do you think the incident and investigation would be reported? Maybe first as a workplace mass shooting, then, as the sting that was in progress came to the investigator’s attention, as a possible, then a definite, terror attack with a co-operating witness who, despite being involved in illegal/incriminating activities with the targets, didn’t get charged?
Yes, that is something that sounds conspiracy theory ist, except that all the parts, except the triggering incident and the subsequent reporting, have been documented to have happened in more than one case by real investigations by The Intercept.
Well, it’s to be expected. The American public has reached new depths of credulity.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2015/12/13/town-rejects-solar-farms-after-complaints-that-they-would-suck-up-all-the-energy-from-the-sun/
I don’t think this is a satire. Even yours truly couldn’t think up something this grotesque.
– – –
ROD SERLING: A stop at Woodland in North Carolina. You can get off I-95, but you can never leave. Next three exits: The Twilight Zone.
Democracy what is it good for?
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2015/may/08/democracy-a-religion-that-has-failed-the-poor
Plato was criticising the concept of Democracy over 2,000 years ago. Its weaknesses are evident even with the slightest of consideration. Firstly, it makes no promises to be decent, even though people believe it will be. Take for example modern Germany, a country that has only existed since 1871; its first moment of true democracy resulted in the popular election of the Nazi party. If the majority of people are arseholes, then the democracy will not be pleasant and this is the main problem in the USA, where most people rabidly believe in right-wing ultra-competitiveness, survival of the fittest, power to the strong. The government is the natural conclusion of that mentality, hence why it is just you sorry idiots on here whining about it like a bunch of old Lefty farts for whom weed no longer works. Secondly, depsite its name, a democracy is only the rule of a people’s chosen leaders, not of the actual people themselves. Thirdly, any bell curve of IQs will tell you the majority are stupid, they are not the intellectually elite, and so they will be prone to making wrong decisions and be open to suggestion and manipulation by their chosen leaders. Fourthly, selfishness does not sit well with social agreement and acting to collective interests. Fifthly, democracy has become a vanity exercise amongst elitist societies, an expression of their desire to be perceived as caring and sharing and equitable and meritocratic, when in fact they are corrupt and grabbing and back-stabbing and exploitative – like having an environmentally friendly machine gun, it is a pointless label used solely to beat less fortunate nations over the head with as they struggle with their own versions of misgovernment.
In short, western democracy is a bullshit lie. Real democracy is theoretically possible, particularly in a digital age where whole populations can quickly participate in key governmental decisions and where transparency of actions and use of funds would be easy to establish.
But when the most powerful nation on Earth decides to spy on EVERY LIVING PERSON’S DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS; to pursue a foreign policy of Exceptionalism that says Do As I Say and Never As I Do; to extra-judicially murder people and amass large numbers of collateral killings in the process; to destabilise whole countries as it seeks to exploit its own and others’ resources; to set up trade agreements that allows its own corporations to sue entire nations and ruled by an elite people that lack any wit but see themselves as superior to all other entities and inhabitted by a lethargic people unwilling to risk their own few creature comforts to bring about change, then democracy is meanigless anyway and all sensible peoples will be locking their doors and cleaning their weapons and advising their childrens that “America is No Good” in anticipation of the onslaught proxy or otherwise.
In short to your question, to paraphrase the song: Absolutely nothing. Say it again.
Democracy? What is it good for, you ask?
I saw that. Even as a gardener who has been eyeing the excessively large tulip poplars to the west and across the street from my garden that increasingly infringe on my veggies’ afternoon sun, I thought it unbelievable that people should be so ill-informed. :-s
It’s what I always believed. Americans are smarter than Europeans. Although the Dutch who originally did this experiment are awesome. (Yes, yes, you can send the hate mail)
Religion Experiment in the US
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riDlxCvFZWw
Two Southern California mosques vandalized
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/12/13/two-mosques-vandalized-in-southern-california.html?utm_content=nobylines&utm_campaign=ajam&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=SocialFlow
From Pedinska’s linked report:
Emphasis mine.
The depth of their ignorance would be funny if it weren’t so hateful and dangerous:
Sufi Muslim, when she sees this, will be better able than I to explain Islam’s view of Jesus.
Islam is the closest religion to Christianity when it comes to Mary and Jesus. Here’s the summary of what the Quran says about Jesus:
1. He was born to the virgin Mary.
2. He was sinless.
3. He was the Messiah.
4. He was God’s Word (A Word FROM God).
5. They did not slay the Messiah (= Word).
There’s a whole Surah on Mary (19) in the Quran.
Here’s the summary of what I say about Jesus:
1. Ain’t real, innit.
2. See 1.
3. See 2.
4. See 3.
5. See 4.
No need for even a pragraph, let alone whole chapters or verses with that kind of decisive and definite interpretation of religious bullshit.
“1. Ain’t real, innit.”
What qualifies you to decide and declare whether (and what about) Jesus was/is real? It certainly doesn’t seem to be actual knowledge of the subject:
Do try to keep up.
Your personal belief about him is not the issue I was addressing. I was merely pointing out that the teachings of Christianity and the Quran are extremely close to each other on the nature of Mary and Christ, and that Islam is by far the closest religion to Christianity on this matter.
After reading more comments I wanted to make a second point. Stupid Americans are up in arms loony paranoid that terrorists are gonna get them this week after only 14 people died. Notwithstanding that stupid Americans shoot other Americans at a rate of 100,000 per year.
But also that we killed hundreds of thousands of normal Iraqi citizens in the course of Bush’s oops war. If anyone has a right to be pissed , it’s Muslims.
Looks like great examples showing that Christianity is the religion of hatred and hurting people.
Your comment is no less ignorant than those who claim that Islam “is the religion of hatred and hurting people.”
There are an estimated 1.6 billion Muslims and 2.2 billion Christians in the world.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/04/02/397042004/muslim-population-will-surpass-christians-this-century-pew-says
” . . . Christianity is the religion of hatred and hurting people.”
No. Any religion or ideology or tribal identity or . . . whatever can be misused or perverted to motivate and justify hatred and violence. In fact, it’s hard to think of one that hasn’t been.
Terrorism is evil, regardless of who commits it. State terror is just as evil as terror by individual actors. And terrorism will always beget terrorism, although commission of same by one party never justifies a response with more terrorism by the other party. It is just what the historical record shows. The loops runs forever.
That means it is an illusion to suppose that one can get rid of one and not the other and still manage not to have terrorism in the world.
We hear of “Islamic terrorism” when individual actors who happen to be Moslems commit acts of terror. But when Americans were lied to about the Vietnam war (Gulf of Tonkin incident), where 58,000 American soldiers would ultimate die, was an act of state terror committed? Or does being a non-Islamic perpetrator somehow exempt one from the label?
Everyone is mute on the question of whether acts of state terror were committed in Iraq when that country was invaded for non-existent WMD that were known a priori to be non-existent, yet my eardrums were busted by the decibel levels screaming daily of ” Iraqi terrorists “. More than 1 million innocent Iraqis lost their lives (the Lancet) and millions more got displaced. Some Americans died. Was the invasion an act of state terror? If not, what was it?
Everyone has amnesia about 911 where Saudi nationals comprised 19 of the 21 individuals purported to have carried out the atrocity while nothing happened to Saudi Arabia whom we knew all along, to sponsor Wahaabism, a particularly virulent and extreme brand of Islam known to be the main incubator of terrorists. Instead, not only was that nation ever mentioned, but some of its VIPs were secretly whisked away for their own safety.
Does shelter and protection of terrorist sponsor nations qualify a state as a terrorist state? Or does “patriotism” demand that one be silent on the matter?
Silence has been golden in fighting ISIS, who have killed many, since is was exposed that the US and the coalition have known all along about the sources of that organization’s funding from oil sales to Turkey, which we did nothing about and hoped no one would ever find out about, until Russia entered the scene.
Does support, through benign neglect, of a terrorist organization’s criminal transactions make one a terrorist? If not, why not?
We now conduct regime change in Syria, seeking to depose a legitimately elected leader, however disgusted his Moslem and Arab rule may seem to us. We are bombing that nation, along with nations of the “free” world, into oblivion. Is this an act of state terror? If not, why not?
Vietnam had done nothing against us. Iraq had done nothing against us. Assad has done nothing against. Yet we killed millions of their people. Millions.
Not a single western nation has ever been called a terrorist state, or accused of commission of state terror, despite everything said above, all of which leads to the question: Is it just Moslems who have the monopoly over terrorism?
Scratching my head…
Just about a month or so ago, the 24/7 tortures that I’ve suffered for 6 long years now, along with thousands of other innocent Americans, at the hands of non-Moslems, where remotely-implemented, revolutionary exotic electromagnetic weapons systems are used, culminated in an act of such vicious evil that the English language is not adequately equipped to describe it.
Moments after posting a comment on an article by Bramford, my diaphragm was paralyzed remotely while simultaneously, gastric acid with partially digested stomach contents was forced up the eosophagus into the mouth by the diabolical torturers.
The acid burned severely while I gagged and choked while denied of the ability to breathe. Just as I was about to pass out, the torturers released the hold. Like today, as they do every single day, their planes – about 3 or 4 – were just above the local library where I typed the comment.
Is this state terror? If not, then what is it?
http://freedomfchs.lefora.com/topic/7442322/nanodevices-in-sensory-overload-mind-control-torture
That link Pat B….You need some serious help
and You are literally wearing a tin foil hat.
Leaving aside the cause or causes, what you describe is similar to having anxiety and experiencing acid reflux.
https://www.beyondblue.org.au/the-facts/anxiety/signs-and-symptoms
Having anxiety is bad enough but it is often associated with depression and PTSD. This can really get one feeling pretty low.
Rather than concentrating on the cause or causes, just for a time may I suggest, taking it easy.
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/e/eagles/take+it+easy_20044576.html
I followed you until the above quote. It hasn’t been a secret that IS is smuggling oil and that it represents a big part of its internal financing. This has been known for some time. Part of the U.S. strategy has been to take out IS refineries. But the Turkish border is not controlled by the U.S. and is pretty clear that Turkey is scared of IS as closing the border may bring retaliation and is probably easier said than done. The US claimed last year that they’d knocked out 50% of their refining capacity.
And yet these Republicans think that they are somehow better than Daesh.
Can you be more specific
everyone,
somebody stole my lunch money.
it was on Mom’s bedside table last night.
It was your Mom Uri,
she said God is my light
and this will cause my face to shine.
Uri will ask but he will not understand,
he will look but never see,
he will continue in his own path
to the place he will forever be.
BREAKING NEWS: ISLAM IS NOT A RELIGION – Pat Robertson
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pat-robertson-islam-not-religion_56671841e4b08e945ff111a9?cps=gravity_5059_-3651743469283304535
Well, that settles it.
Well, according to Bill O’Reilly, neither is Christianity:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2012/11/28/bill-oreilly-christianity-is-not-a-religion-its-a-philosophy/>Bill O’Reilly: ‘Christianity is Not a Religion; It’s a Philosophy’
BTW, I’m still waiting for someone to argue with my contention that, e.g., Capitalism, is effectively a religion.
You’d think that, after more than 20 years of practice, I’d be able to properly employ the simplest HTML tags:
Bill O’Reilly: ‘Christianity is Not a Religion; It’s a Philosophy’
Related “mystery” Israel doing daily medical flights to pickup wounded Islamic militants in Syria. To return them to Syria.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3315347/Watch-heart-pounding-moment-Israeli-commandos-save-Islamic-militants-Syrian-warzone-risking-lives-sworn-enemies.html
Hey Glenn, when we kill a bunch of Muslims for drawing a cartoon about Uncle Sam, you be sure and let me know.
Bravisimo, Duce!
But this is what Glenn has been talking about for a long time and you certainly understand English.
“We” have been killing them for way less than “drawing a cartoon”. “We” have been invading their countries and killing them genocidally at a rate 8-times Nazi Germany’s during WWII (3rd grade Math for you) just for -being-.
Well, in order to be true to matters we give a little of a soap-opera, hollywoodesque slant to it by invading them with “our allies” and telling stories about WMD and such things, which truthfulness we take as seriously as our willingness to find any factual basis to any of them. At the end of the day they are all narratives of abuse. You and many other people don’t seem to be able to see any of it in that light. This is what happens to you when you are busy hearing God telling you thing.
But then when their crazies (who curiously enough, also believe that “there is no God but Allah”) kill very few of “us” “they” do so because “‘they’ hate us for having a free media …”
truth and peace and love,
RCL
100 thumbs up for Ricardo’s comment.
Glenn is not saying that Muslims are in the right. Glenn is saying that picking on Muslims for the crimes of some Muslims is not a good idea. You be sure to let everyone know when Glenn defends violence because somebody drew a picture of Muhammad.
Guess you haven’t heard about the two wars US has been waging…one of them illegally under false pretenses and killing hundreds of thousands of Muslims….strange how you remember a few crazies killing a few people over cartoons , but completely missed the hundreds of thousands of dead Muslims.
We should call them what they are: radical Christian terrorists. Does that sound ridiculous? Then acknowledge that all such acts, no matter who does them, are ridiculous. The world needs to GROW UP!
Want to try a bias test? (I did)
Call C-Span, act enraged, and complain that ‘the Muslims’ aim to ‘kill us all’ and propose solutions such as deporting them, bombing their countries back to the (Sharon) Stone Age or turning their country into a glass desert. You will be allowed to finish your rant.
Then, call again and claim that ‘the Jews’ have taken over the country’s media, entertainment and banks and bought nearly all politicians and turned our country into Israel’s obedient puppet. Suggest that we re-declare our independence and stop aiding and abetting the Zionists. Note at what point you are cut off.
Piwik Analytics is acting very strangely here at present.
One minute Ghostery blocks it, the next Ghostery gets turned off by it, and the page is not scaned.
I have been unable to reply to comments for half a day. (hurray I hear you say)
Thanks for the story, I’ll call my local mosque today and offer a hug of support and love from a distance.
I’m not going to engage with the bigots, but I can say nice things to the other people the bigots hate.
Remember folks, you are free to practice any religion you want without fear of persecution.
And as always, free thought is tolerated on this site – as long as it does not contradict the dogma put forth by The Grand Poobah Greenwald. If so, your “free” speech will not be tolerated, and you will be (rhetorically) bashed and beaten to a bloody pulp by his most faithful of followers…
Rhetorical bashings are intrinsic to free speech – so I’m not sure why you see a contradiction. Free speech most definitely does not imply respect for anyone else’s opinion – except to the limited extent that you afford them an opportunity to express their opinion and in exchange, they afford you an opportunity to demolish it. That is, respecting someone’s right to express an opinion, but not necessarily respect for the opinion itself.
Free speech is an anarchic concept, where people ruthlessly promote their own opinion against all comers until only one point of view is left standing. Idealists hope this survivor will be the truth, but of course in real life that is unlikely. I think it served a purpose at one time, when human knowledge was less complete and people were still engaged in a search for the truth. Now that all substantial questions have been settled, free speech just provides an opportunity to promote flawed thinking and errors, so it’s probably outdated, kept alive only by virtue of being embedded in the US Constitution.
I’d love to pull the paper bag off of the face of this comic genius…
I disagree, of course … *bearing in mind, ‘it is only through the clash of differing opinion that the spark of truth may be realized.’
If I were a Muslim in the U S, I’d call the Sikhs (i.e. Akal Security, Inc.) to stand protection at all mosques and centers.
Except that the Sikhs and Muslims are supposed to be enemies. The Sikh religion was created from the he Hindu Kshatriya caste, to defend the Hindus from the invading Muslims. The first born males of the Kshatriya caste were donated to religion to drive the Muslims out of the Indian subcontinent. In fact the devout Sikh males are forbidden to shave their beards or cut their hair, until all Muslims are driven out of the Indian subcontinent. It’s a twist of irony that Sikhs are being mistaken in North America for Muslims.
Aaaaahhh…. religion.
Things are much worse in Europe I think. Trump’s sister in the UK is way beyond him when it comes to stirring up a mob. This will never happen here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byRGsYJAPPA
No, Jayda Fransen has no blood relationship to Donald “haired brained” Trump
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britain_First
I can tell because she doesn’t pronounce “huge” as if she was French ;-)
She surely talks the same kind of nonsensical sh!t, for example, equating race with skin colour as a way to defend herself
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization)
I am afraid those kinds of populist drives run deeper than blood
I am really enjoying it all. Trump for president all the way!!!
RCL
The Reply button continues to not function. So I’m forced to reply in a new thread.
@stinkfoot
Dec. 12 2015, 10:30 p.m.
Then you should know that a text must at least be interpreted within its own context.
Taking Quranic verses out of their textual context is like claiming that someone said, “A banana will kill you,” where in fact they said, “A banana will kill you if you put rat poison in it“, by omitting the “if you put rat poison in it” part of the original statement.
These are not tricks, they are courtesies and methodologies that are sensible. You can’t turn to the Quran, isolate a verse without looking at what else it has stated on the subject.
You seem to have this common with the so-called Muslims who take things out of context. Yet, you call yourself a theologian!
It’s simply a matter of examining what is it that they are saying within the context of what else the Quran has stated on the subject, often just by examining the verses before and after them.
For example, I have seen this verse (2:191) written on placards and referenced here:
“(2:191) And slay them wherever you may come upon them”
Those anti-Islam people who bring forward this verse do so to suggest that the Muslims are commanded by God to slay the non-believers wherever we find them, that it is a universal decree which we Muslims must carry out.
Yet, if you examine this verse in conjunction with the preceding one (2:190), the remainder of 2:191 and the subsequent verses, you’ll get a completely different picture.
So it is extremely dishonest for those who bring up 2:191 only partially as if that part of 2:191 forms a complete thought, which it DOES NOT.
In this case, I have only pointed out the verse before 2:191, the remainder of 2:191 and a few verses after 2:191, which are all there in one place. I have not examined this verse in light of other parts of the Quran, nor have I examined them in light of its historical context, Hadith or the 1400+ years of traditional scholarship on this verse.
So, why is it that 2:191 is partially quoted all over to give a very erroneous impression about the Muslims?
It’s not a ‘trick’ to present 2:191 in light of the verse before, the remainder of 2:191 and the portions after 2:191. It’s a simple matter of examining a complete thought and not present just a small part of a thought.
You have no evidence that there are 10% of the Muslims who favor harming the innocent non-combatants, that there are “100 million terrorists”. This number in reality reflects your own personal inner state. It’s you who are feeling insecure and are fearful.
Muslims have by far been the biggest victims of violence carried out by other Muslims. Rather than sympathize with them, you choose to stoke fear of the Muslims and come up with numbers that someone just cooked up in their brains.
Farid Zakaria has spoken about this number and he has rejected it by saying that if there were 100 million terrorists in the world, there’d be a lot more destruction.
Moreover, the word “terrorism” has been highly politicized and its meaning has been distorted. To some, if a Muslim grows a beard, wears the niqab or prays 5 times a day, as is required by the religion, he is a terrorist sympathizer.
No, you are not.
The biggest threat to the West since WWII was from the Soviet Union. And the West did just fine. You’ve succumbed to your lower self (irrational fear, insecurity, hatred, vengeance, lack of inner peace). Some leaders and pundits are catering to the lower self of their bases. If that continues, their higher self will become subdued.
How sad!
Moreover, you are clearly condoning killing the innocent bystanders and dismissing it as “collateral damage”.
So, who’s condoning the deliberate killing of the non-combatants here (women, men, children and babies)?
I’m not surprised. I get that a lot. People try to prove that the basis of terrorism committed by a few misguided so-called Muslims is none other than Islam’s primary source, the Quran. I challenge them, and they just run away because they are incapable of proving their case from the Quran simply because it’s just not possible to do so.
See “Top Ten Ways Islamic Law forbids Terrorism”, by Juan Cole, at http://www.juancole.com/2013/04/islamic-forbids-terrorism.html
Here’s a non-Muslim who is showing in a short article how Islamic law prohibits terrorism.
What tricks is he using?
All the worlds great religion(s) forbid terrorism (and ‘radicalism’ for that matter.) … eschew all forms bigotry and discrimination (*anything* that makes one feel superior to others) and established guidelines to protect the poor and down-trodden… as best I can tell, sufi.
I imagine, too, the spirit of The Prophet wonders what happened to the New Colossus …?
p.s. Appalachians don’t pussyfoot around with stinkyfeet theologians, sufi. Bad ju ju.
*Appalachians, the laughing stock of American culture since the Beverly Hillbillies, are America’s proverbial ‘low man on the totem pole’ and have born the wips and scorn of outrageous fortune in quite isolation since the industrial revolution hauled paradise off Sugar Mountain.
Stinkfoot could be another lousy attempt to imitate BM.
There’s only one.
>”There’s only one.”
Praise the Lord! :)
“There’s only one.”
Via asexual reproduction and a rented womb from Rahm Emanual’s mother, we were gifted with
Benito’s spawn.
No, this is.
http://www.gettyimages.com/photos/alessandra-mussolini
*laughingstock* Yeah, really. What is up with that. I used to work for this guy in Hollywood. We were really close but bickered all the time. Working for him was like working for your little brother… that had power over you. When he found out I spent all my summers growing up in White Sulphur Springs, WVA, he started calling me “Hillbilly Freakazoid.” When I’d get back from a business lunch he’d ask me what I ordered “Possum stew?”
SO I’d retort in kind, “No. I had a chicken caesar salad. Thanks for asking – Jew.”
Hooo. That would really piss him off. “you can’t call me Jew.” We’d go back and forth, on and on.
Being terrified is really the problem, not the other way around.
It’s a good problem to have. People agree to a lot of outrageous stuff that their “higher self”, as you often call it, would otherwise revolt. And it’s happening across the board, not just among moderately good or moderately bad terrorists. The terrorized are indulging in it with even greater vigor. People take far less effort to get convinced, and in fact perfectly normal folks get converted to self-appointed anti-terror advocates.
Interestingly, the Koran does it remarkably well. Verse after verse after verse it tries to scare the reader by threatening how the entire world’s misfortune will fall on him should he dare to question the other verses sandwiched in between the scaremongering ones.
I think the Koran needs a revision, if only to clarify what you have mentioned. But I hesitate to suggest this, knowing that it currently is in the custody of very unsafe hands. Probably it is still in moderately good condition than what it could become, and given that we like and assist all the moderately good ones I suggest status quo.
I say the Bengals, the Packers, and the Patriots will win today.
Those who commit those actions listed in the article are using a single act of extremist terrorism as an excuse to act on their racial and cultural hatred, just as those who started the Iraq war used 911 as an excuse to invade that country.
Those who comment negatively on bringing attention to those actions are attempting to hide their significance.
The number of people who silently or overtly support these actions is something like the number of Trump supporters plus a good fraction of those who support other Republican candidates, and no doubt a significant number of democrats as well. This adds up to somewhat under half the US population, at least.
Please provide links to your data sources.
LOL @ data sources. You must be new a
I think the violence against muslims living here is appalling. However, this is to be expected given Obama’s limited military response and refusal to acknowledge radical islam. People are tired of the shadow of terrorism. It boggles peoples minds that we continue to take in people from hot beds of islamic wahabbism and have our leaders act shocked when an act of terror takes place on our soil.
I surmise so long as our leadership sits by and continues to put the feelings of others from foreign countries over the safety of its citizens then yeah, their is probably going to be a serious escalation of these types of attacks.
The remainder of your comment casts serious doubt on the sincerity of the first sentence
You state that unless the President changes his policies, people will continue to engage in acts of violence against Muslims living in the US. What would you call the unlawful use or threatened use of violence against people with the intention of intimidating or coercing the government, for ideological or political reasons?
Deuce strikes again. Fantastico! (or something Italian sounding that’s gleeful and congratulatory). Many years ago DOD brain washers used keyword RIP. Terrorism is the unlawful use or threat of force or violence to achieve Religious Idealogical or Political goals, sir.
This is important what Deuce says or implies though and aligns with sayings like “fighting fire with fire”. It actually means you become or behave in the same way your enemy (or the thing you hate) is behaving. This is possibly why non-violence and not resisting your attackers has some god like attribute (viz Ghandi and Jesus). I’m not condoning these, just pointing out the hypocrisy that goes overlooked, but not by Deuce.
In many ways TI points out how the war on terror has actually caused the U.S. to behave like terrorists – and various other things the U.S. should not want to become… national surveillance state, etc..
Score board: Terrorists:1, U.S.: 0.
I’d like to quote Rabbi Berel Wein who said: “the point of an argument is not just to win the argument; but, not to lose yourself because of the argument”. This could be extended to war and national identities.
Wow. Absolutely amazing. Most of you have been writing whiny, pissy, little insults at each other all day, Dec. 12, from about 9:00am to 6:00pm. What kind of people are you? You know who you are. All day you sit at your computer and compose some of the dumbest comments on the Internet. Most are just opinions about what can only be assumptions about the world gleaned from TV Crime Dramas and so-called American Action Hero Movies.
And when you mention “facts” or “statistics” you rarely post sources. And when a source is presented, it’s usually from the usual websites/people known to lie and to put 2 and 2 together to get 4 — only it ain’t 4! (Like brietbart and thenewrepublic — don’t you know propaganda when you read it?) There exists websites/people/radio shows that will write and say outrageous-stretch-the-truth-to-their-will rhetoric just to stir you up, don’t you know? Oh so many of you fall for it. (Carl Sagan calls it being “bamboozled”.) (But that’s because you are not schooled in what’s called the “Scientific Method”, so… I can understand, just not forgive — not that you’d understand.)
Greenwald gets mostly derided for telling/taking only one side, less so for just making things up. There is a difference. You can’t dispute his fact/truth telling, so you deflect by bringing up unrelated “facts” so you can go, “What about that, GG? What about that? Huh? That means your wrong… or something.”
All day you post silly little comments all alike, all day, 12 hours? 18 hours? 20 hours? That is why the term, “Get a life!” was invented. And it was invented just for you. Your not just trolls, concern trolls, or shills for the sole purpose of spreading mis-information. Y’all are Uber-Trolls. Those 12/18/20 hours a day, every day, all week, comment posters. You should be required to sign your comments: “– I don’t read Glenn Greenwald, I just posts comments about him.”
You believe so utterly in the “Liberal Media” canard that you do not read science/history books or magazines, can’t watch PBS’s Nova/Frontline/Independent Lens — probably the greates sources of truth-telling this world has known for decades — simply and only be cause your radio-show, Fox news, website, darlings just say that it is so. You may not be unintelligent, but you certainly are uneducated.
I could write more, perhaps to clarify a few things written in haste, but I’ve spent my quota of commenting for this week already…
…and I’m thanking a God I don’t believe in.
Sorry for a pissy reply, not really, but lectures talking down to everyone collectively is being just as unfocused and stereotypical as your claims about “everyone” else. Additionally, you completely ignore the highly likely “fact” that many uber-trolls as you call them are trained political and intelligence operatives intentionally wanting to disrupt particular conversations here. That makes it just as likely then you’re one of those types or else you somehow believe this is the just another effing HuffPost and needs their “uber”-moderation.
Personally, I don’t believe anyone needs to get a life more than the excessively judgmental.
…and we all know there is only one correct opinion to have (liberal), on any given topic.
Must be near the holidays, the annual fruitcakes have arrived. The explanation for why there are more murders (“terrorism”) in the world is an American Policy of looking out for number one. The World is run by multinational capitalist. Our government only concern is and “should” be to protect their profits. You don’t need a diatribe to understand this. It a simple fact of following the money. All the rest is conjecture.
Mr. Greenwald
No single author avoids and changes the subject of Islamic terrorism like you, Mr. Greenwald. Anytime, people in the west die from Islamic extremists, we are either accused of being racists for even thinking it might have been Islamic terrorism; accused of conducting racists wars against Muslim majority countries; or – time and time again – westerners are accused of collective punishment of Muslims living in the west due to western racism and retribution (the topic of the last two articles). Since early November, about 145 people have been killed in western countries due to Islamic terrorism, and there has not been a confirmed death of a single Muslim in retribution – but you are sounding the alarm none the less.
“……But Trump does not need to win, or even get close to winning, for his rhetoric and the movement that he’s stoking to be dangerous in the extreme…….But all of that is being drowned by these growing and deeply menacing trends aimed at American Muslims……There is, it turns out, a serious problem of domestic terrorism in the U.S., but it’s not the kind that typically receives attention or concern…….. Trump’s…..commands the attention of large numbers of Americans……which in turn generates enormous, highly charged crowds pulsating with grievance and rage……”
The “rage” of Americans is highly overrated, yet some suspicion directed at Muslim immigration is normal if you look at the record of Muslim immigrants in Europe where thousands of Muslims have left Europe to join ISIS – an antidemocratic, anti-western, racist terrorist organization.
However, I do agree with you that Muslims are victims, but mainly to Islamic terrorism. Muslims are by far the most likely people to be injured or die at the hands of (Sunni) Islamic terrorists world-wide. Shia Mosques are attacked frequently in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq targeting Shia worshipers because they are apostates. Thousands are killed each year by the Pakistan and Afghanistan Taliban, al-Shabob, Boko Haram, al-Qaeda, ISIS and so on. Islamic terrorists don’t kill Muslims because they are concerned about western bombing. They kill for power. The brutality of ISIS and the Taliban is proof of that.
In the whacked out world of the radical left, westerners killed by Islamic extremists are ignored or blamed for their own murders – and the terrorists are made into victims because of our foreign policies despite the Islamists willingness to murder mostly Muslims so they can assume power and subjugate Muslims under a twenty-first century fascist system of government (real fascism, Mr. Greenwald).
No single author avoids and changes the subject more than Craig “Whataboutery” Summers. Hilariously, he just did it again, in a tl;dr (skimmed it) post that begins: “No single author avoids and changes the subject.”
Craig,
It seems you and Mona are married for many years, they way you guys follow each other and fight on the smallest of pretexts. Your post really makes no sense, but still it provokes Mona to bring your domestic quarrel to the street. Actually, it does not stink as much as some of Mr Uri Nate’s posts or as lousy as some cyphers, but nevertheless you always do have some minor points worth considering.
-H
Despite appearances, Mona and I do really like each other……..
My grandfather also used to say that when grandma wasn’t around.
Craig, I emphatically do not like you. You celebrate torture. You do not merely endorse it, you are enthusiastic about torture. I do not “like” anyone of that depraved sort.
Don’t worry Mona. I was just kidding. How ever, I always did admire your powerful position at the Intercept. You can suspend a posters right to free speech because they call you a dumbass.
Merry Christmass
I thought I remembered reading something like this several months back. Did she really get somebody banned for that!?
Hi Nate
Mona would say that he was banned for crap-flooding, but does anyone crap flood anymore than Mona? I fully believe that was at least part of the reason (although I cannot remember his name).
If answers are left on the board that haven’t first been approved on the pages of the NYT, she squeals to Glennn! if he replies to them, oblivious that he’s exchanged opinion with them in Intercept and Guardian comments before.
She also has a banal knack for glomming onto and overusing “whataboutery.”
A day late and a dollar short.
http://www.songlyrics.com/graham-parker/local-girls-lyrics/
Without a doubt I got to intercept
Must be time someone went and shouted in their ear
“You look all right in that cheap green dress
But every time you swish it round you make me disappear”
Yes I’m aware of exactly what I’m doing
Making everything a mystery
Don’t bother with it, it don’t bother me
Don’t bother with the local girls
Don’t bother with the local girls
Don’t bother with the local girls
Don’t bother with them, they don’t bother me
Agree. But they need to raise their game, i.e., Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf — “Getting angry, baby?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nInE5TITzE8
It did not render as hoped. I should not have expected it would.
Reply links remain disabled on this particular device (only) by brave patriots saving country.
Reply link works fine on this iOS device. Same version 9.2
The Stasi has had much fun with the compromised device, especially in airports and a 787 with USB rigging installed in an electrical outlet. Good to know US tax dollars are being spent wisely.
It seems as if surveillance goons have disabled my ipad’s reply link on TI’s site because they live in a free country and all that.
Below, if rendered correctly, is an html snippet of a comment followed by a reply link, copied with the view source app. TI devs, see anything wrong? Bad html? iPad bug? Evidence of goonery?
HTML snippet, within a pre pre tag, if it works:
reactid=”.ti.1.0.1.1.0.0.0.0.5.0.1.1:$184713.1:$184720.1:$184733.$184733.0.2″>I think some of Glenn’s thinking regarding Charlie Hebdo was a bit muddled. He is far from nuts.
As for your hatred of Islam, you don’t sound much different from the people who drop in at TI to rail about the perfidy of Jews. Same shit, different day.
? ReplyLouise Cypher ? Gator90Dec. 12 2015, 2:07 p.m.
I started to experience it on my Macbook a few days ago in all of the browsers I have: Safari, Chrome and Opra.
It also doesn’t work in Safari on my iPad. It works in the Puffin browser on my iPad.
the reply button works on my windows machine if i open it in the same tab but if i open comments in its own tab the reply button doesn’t work.
the ‘latest’ button has stopped altogether. makes it tedious to see replies to earlier posts. i waded through a couple of times but no more.
On my Macbook, when I click on the Reply or the Latest button, I see “JavaScript ‘;'” on the browser’s status bar, but nothing happens.
So, yes, both buttons aren’t working on Mac and iPad Safari. Puffin is fine.
@Mr Torturedstan:
This is The Intercept’s doing, not NSA or FBI. They had already warned a month ago that they have engaged third parties to track who visits their website. What you now see is the result of that. If you really care, find out the third party trackers and block their domains directly from the router.
As many of us have said already. I am amazed that TI is in the “tracking” business and at this point I don’t see the difference between it being done by the NSA, FBI or TI. I wonder what Glenn has to say about it?
There you have some “civil” and “business conscious” farmers selling almonds criticizing other farmers of “lying”, “manipulating” being “morally base”, “unconstitutional” … for including peanuts in their bags, then one day they “simply” and rather “quietly” choose to do the same thing for “business reasons”. Of course, as they have themselves argued “when we do it is different”, because we are letting you know (as compared to not letting us know for “national security” reasons) …
The fact that TI does that is to me a more telling sign of our times than whatever USG official say or do.
The only U.S. businesses I respect regarding protecting the privacy of their customers and users are Joseph Nacchio’s Qwest Communications and Ladar Levison’s Lavabit. As you well know, both were put out of business by USG.
~
There are however various things you could do to at the very least make their jobs harder:
1st. You should know what they do and know how they do it
~
New Cookie Technologies: Harder to See and Remove, Widely Used to Track You
SEPTEMBER 14, 2009 | BY SETH SCHOEN
eff.org/deeplinks/2009/09/new-cookie-technologies-harder-see-and-remove-wide
eff.org/deeplinks/2009/09/online-trackers-and-social-networks
eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/tracking-by-user-agent
~
2nd. You should always access TI without javascript and remove all cookies periodically
3rd. You should use Tor
4th. Don’t just rely on browsers (as they run), routers, … check also how your operating system can help you.
5th …
In my case I use Linux-based live DVDs, users with ram-based home directories (so absolutely nothing reaches the hard drive) and I have a few scripts to save the sessions and configurations I care about, log out and restart as a totally new random user
Since I have been included in the FBI criminal index they are quite literally tracking my every move, so those tactics are futile. I still do them as a way to let them do their own work and to gain experience so I can teach other people.
RCL
~
youtube.com/results?search_query=3rd+party+trackers
~
RCL
Mr Trump’s proposal to temporarily halt the import of Jihadi terrorists – both good and bad ones – is beginning to make sense. It’s not that Mr Trump does not like Muslims; it’s just that he has this brilliant idea to minimize the harm that each group is going to cause the other due to the hatred they have for each other. Mr Trump has thousands of Jihadi supporters and many Jihadis consider him Alla’s chosen one having already got his six dozen martyr’s special awards here on earth. If we follow Mr Trump’s suggestion then we can all live happily together once again.
Look for The Donald to upgrade his position.
Look who is leading in Iowa?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ted-cruz-iowa_566cacafe4b0fccee16ed84f
Ted Cruz. He wants to make the sands of the Middle East glow in the dark.
@Sufi:
The way things are I guess Obama will have to carry on into a third term. None of the Republicans have shown any reliability that would make the NSA/CIA/FBI establishment, the corporations and the banks comfortable, although Jeb Bush come closest. But then he lacks resilience that his kins have shown. Among the Democrats Hillary Clinton has the kind of deviousness and ruthlessness that goes with the job, but she is damn stupid. Some of the interns stole her prized possession and she never even squeaked – God knows what Jihadis will steal during her tenure. Mr Sanders stands no chance given his alienation with the people who really decide.
Under these circumstances, Mr Donald Trump is a wisp of fresh air that has revealed what a bunch of jokers we have on display. He won’t harm the Muslim community any more than the rest of the line-up, and given the history of candidates doing exactly opposite of what they promise, your community of moderately good terrorists will be well treated under him as long as they don’t carry guns into some parties. I hope people vote for him and call the bluff about what this election is all about and how it is manipulated.
So don’t go by who’s leading where.
@Louise Cypher
I acknowledge one of your points, namely, that Muslims in the US are statistically more likely than non-Muslims to commit acts of terror. There is clearly a species or subset or offshoot or perversion of Islam that validates or encourages such acts. And that is a problem.
Now please acknowledge my point. The above notwithstanding, Americans face far more danger from swimming pools than from Muslim terrorists, as a statistical matter. Correct? (And yet, I still let my kids frolic in their grandparents’ pool. I’m brave like that.)
“I acknowledge one of your points, namely, that Muslims in the US are statistically more likely than non-Muslims to commit acts of terror.”
Did y’all include, e.g., drone operators and presidents in your calculations?
Er, no. I suppose I should have specified non-governmental actors.
@Gator
“. . . I suppose I should have specified non-governmental actors.”
You Are More Than 7 Times As Likely To Be Killed By A Right-Wing Extremist Than By Muslim Terrorists
A. Muslims in the US are statistically more likely than non-Muslims to commit acts of terror.
B. I am more than 7 times as likely to be killed by a right-wing extremist than by Muslim terrorists.
Point B, assumed to be true, in no way refutes Point A. They are entirely different comparisons.
Interesting article, though. I note the authors fail to include casualties from 9/11/2001 in their data, choosing instead to begin with 9/12/2001. (I guess if one were conducting a study of, say, Japanese military aggression, one would have to decide whether to start before or after 12/7/1941, which would make a fairly significant difference.)
With that said, I agree with you that the threat of terrorism perpetrated by folks calling themselves Muslims (though a real thing) is wildly exaggerated in the American imagination and our public discourse. That’s why, in my interaction with Louise Cypher, I noted the danger of swimming pools, which exceeds that of Muslim terrorism even if 9/11/2001 is included in the comparison.
You have a very valid point. Going back to the arrival of the Mayflower will do for you?
Doing so may be truly enlightening to you and many other!
RCL
Every compilation of data must start somewhere. But, obviously, if one is counting casualties from terror attacks committed in the US by people calling themselves Muslims, 9/12/2001 is not a random or arbitrary starting point. It is specifically intended to exclude the most lethal such attack from the data, in order to support a desired conclusion. Of course, starting from 9/10/2001 would also reflect an outcome-driven choice, so there you are.
As someone once said, there are 3 kinds of lies: Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Well, since you’ve confined your argument (such as it is) to attacks inside the US, let’s (somewhat arbitrarily) start with the 1980s:
Wikipedia’s list of “Islamist” terrorist attacks
The ones with an American flag in 1st position at the head of the row took place on American soil. I count ten (10) in total, the first being the 1993 shootings at Langley. Of course, my eyes are a bit worn out, so I could have made a counting error, so check and see.
. . . and . . .
Terror from the Right
The Southern Poverty Law Center has documented, listed and described plots and attacks in the US, beginning in 1995, planned and/or perpetrated by “right-wing extremists” (thus not counting others that may have had other political/religious/ideological motivations). I counted one hundred thirteen (113) of those. Of course, some were aborted by law enforcement action before victims were killed, but many were not.
Terrorism 2002-2005- U.S. Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Investigation
The title of this one is misleading, because it actually includes reports going back to 1980. It is also not particularly easy to decipher, so Washington’s Blog helpfully published a nice, colorful pie chart:
Non-Muslims Carried Out More than 90% of All Terrorist Attacks on U.S. Soil
This does not seem believable to me, while it may seem true due to the disproportionate news coverage. But statistically, I doubt this is true. Louise linked to an article at “breitbart” that linked as it’s source a “national review” article that does not state where it got the data. It just states that 50% of all terror attacks since 911 in the US has been by Muslims. That is simply an unbelievable statistic, if you think a little bit behind the headlines.
This is, in my opinion, not a correct way to think about the problem. There is fundamentally very little difference, in how one is supposed to live one’s life, between the three Abrahamic religions. Also, most of the adherents of the religions have not read their text books. So the idea that the violence stems from the text, rather than something else, is probably not true. What explains the fact that only the Tamils of India, or the Sikhs of India engage in terrorist violence. What explains the fact that only the Northern Irish Catholics, and not Catholics from Ireland, engage in violence? The problem is in the politics, and not in the religious texts. Because the texts, when read carefully, hardly reads like anything intelligible.
” Because the texts, when read carefully, hardly reads like anything intelligible.”
——
C’mon now, let’s be serious. You were doing so well until this sentence.
Well, I should have qualified my statement as, “from an atheist’s point of view.” :)
” There is, it turns out, a serious problem of domestic terrorism in the U.S., but it’s not the kind that typically receives attention or concern. ”
True. It appears that the tortured definition of terrorism was designed precisely to exempt domestic terrorists from the label, in a deliberate effort to not antagonize the citizenry, as its support in the commission of state terror around the world, is critical, although not absolutely so.
To the domestic torturers, one cannot torture the truth out of existence.
@Louisecifer
after a typically worthless comment by Louise, it is rational to not respond to Louise.
Three Israelis ‘admit burning Palestinian boy alive’
and then this one, too
something about the Jews’ propensity for extreme violence. perhaps that is were the Muslim extremists get it. they’ve had 7 decades to learn from their teacher.
Suspected Jewish extremists burn Palestinian child to death
It should be noted that anti-Semitic hate crimes still outnumber Islamaphobic hate crimes.
Considering that the FBI did not record anti-Muslim hate crimes as their own category until starting just this year, it would be interesting to see how you could prove such a statement.
The minute you cite CAIR, you’ve lost. CAIR has been outed as front group for the Muslim Brotherhood and has been implicated in the funding of terrorism.
Nonsense, this is CAIR. CAIR is a great and absolutely necessary organization.
CAIR is great and necessary if you support Islamic terror.
Ten Questions CAIR refuses to Answer:
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Pages/CAIR-Questions.htm
_________________________
Is CAIR a Terror Group?
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/393614/cair-terror-group-daniel-pipes
Indeed, CAIR incites, funds, and does much more vis-à-vis terrorism: It apologizes for terrorist groups: Challenged repeatedly to denounce Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist groups, CAIR denounces the acts of violence but not their sponsors. It is connected to Hamas: Hamas, designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. and many other governments, indirectly created CAIR and the two groups remain tight. Examples: In 1994, CAIR head Nihad Awad publicly declared his support for Hamas; the Holy Land Foundation (HLF), a Hamas front group, contributed $5,000 to CAIR; in turn, CAIR exploited the 9/11 attacks to raise money for HLF; and, this past August, demonstrators at a CAIR-sponsored rally in Florida proclaimed “We are Hamas!” It settled a lawsuit: CAIR initiated a libel lawsuit in 2004 over five statements by a group called Anti-CAIR. But two years later, CAIR settled the suit with prejudice (meaning that it cannot be reopened), implicitly acknowledging the accuracy of Anti-CAIR’s assertions, which included: “CAIR is a terrorist supporting front organization that is partially funded by terrorists”; “CAIR . . . is supported by terrorist supporting individuals, groups and countries”; “CAIR has proven links to, and was founded by, Islamic terrorists”; and “CAIR actively supports terrorists and terrorist supporting groups and nations.” It includes individuals accused of terrorism: At least seven board members or staff at CAIR have been arrested, denied entry to the U.S., or were indicted on or pled guilty to (or were convicted of) terrorist charges: Siraj Wahhaj, Bassem Khafagi, Randall (“Ismail”) Royer, Ghassan Elashi, Rabih Haddad, Muthanna Al-Hanooti, and Nabil Sadoun. It is in trouble with the law: Federal prosecutors in 2007 named CAIR (along with two other Islamic organizations) as “unindicted co-conspirators and/or joint venturers” in a criminal conspiracy to support Hamas financially. In 2008, the FBI ended contacts with CAIR because of concern about its continuing terrorist ties.
Tut-tut. The link I gave you debunks that wingnut bullshit.
Pipes states facts. Nothing to debunk.
“Wingnut bullshit”
Thank you for outing yourself.
Bye
His stating facts is like focusing on a handful of pieces of a fairly large and complex jigsaw puzzle and describing the entire reality (the entire puzzle put together) on the basis of just those pieces.
He is a master of that.
His research methodology and the ability to determine the authenticity of a text is also a suspect.
If you’ve develop an image of Islam from Pipes, then you’ve developed a very distorted image of it.
Oh, and the reason I know the link I gave debunks most of your copy pasta wingnut horseshit, is because I wrote much of that to which I link.
That means you have a conflict of interest. Thank you for outing yourself again.
It means I’ve researched the topic and written on it, in collaboration with knowledgeable others. Our piece is amply documented with reference notes. I’m quite content to let ours stand as against yours for any of our readers.
“CAIR has been outed as front group for the Muslim Brotherhood . . .”
Oh, no! Not the Muslim Brotherhood, winner of the first democratic election in Egyptian history!
White House congratulates Egypt’s Morsi
Of course, Obama (together with his SecState) was just as quick to support Sisi’s junta, after the coup . . .
Obama loves CAIR. Further proof that they’re terrorists.
Nothing particularly eloquent about the what you cited from “conservative figures ” . It’s just politics and it’s based on ignorance.
“morally repulsive, unconstitutional, and un-American.” No.
See: Pipes Bombs: http://www.typhoidmikey.com/#comment-2406019977
Glenn, when you actually do a piece on the victims of Islamic terrorism, you will have circled the square. Until then, I expect you will do a perfectly good job at critiquing US power and racism while never, *ever* publishing a piece on the very real threat of Islamism. It’s your black hole in an otherwise noble career.
” Islamic terrorism”
——–
There is nothing Islamic about harming the non-combatants, including off duty soldiers.
That your interpretation of Islam. Not all Muslims agree with you. You can’t wash your hands of this simply by denying it.
My position is supported by an overwhelming majority of Muslims, by the primary source of Islam — the Quran — and 1400+ years of traditional scholarship.
Here’s a 600+ page long fatwa against terrorism:
http://www.minhajbooks.com/images-books/Edict-Terrorism-Fitna-Khawarij/Edict-Terrorism-Fitna-Khawarij_1.pdf
It rejects terrorism as Islamic using the Quran and Hadith.
Here’s a short article, “Top Ten Ways Islamic Law forbids Terrorism”, at http://www.juancole.com/2013/04/islamic-forbids-terrorism.html
What’s your evidence that terrorism is according to the teachings of Islam?
Start with its primary source, the Quran, as it’s a small book and sets the parameters for Islam. Produce your evidence from it, and we’ll see.
I’m a theologian. I know your tricks. They won’t work with me.
You’ll bring me ten verses that you believe I’ve misinterpreted and then fix them up to rationalize things.
You might be peaceful, but it’s little consequence: If 10% of muslims agree with the jihadists’ views, that’s about 100 million terrorists. Big Problem. We are in fight for our lives and culture. There will be “collateral damage”. That’s what happens in war.
We are done.
So there are 100 million Muslim terrorists in the world. Next question, where?
The Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Nations white supremacist groups are deeply Christian in their ideology. By your reasoning, all Christians must answer for the acts and statements of the Klan and Aryan Nations.
Bad analogy. They are Christian supremacist groups but Christianity has no “jihad” sort of ideology supporting them.
Excuse you. Sufi does not need to “wash her hands” of anything. She is a fine person who happens to be Muslim. She is required to abjure terrorism committed by a self-identified Muslim about as much as I am required, as a white person, to denounce Dylann Roof.
That said, I disagree with her on this. Islamic terrorists are, in fact Islamic. Just as the Army of God (anti-abortion terrorists) is a species of Christian. Or the Irgun was, and the JDL is, a species of Jewish.
To the Muslims, the word, ‘Islamic’, means, ‘According to the Teachings of Islam’. The word, Muslim, is used to refer to the person who adheres to their understanding of Islam.
It’s semantics, but ‘Muslim Terrorism’ would be more accurate than ‘Islamic Terrorism’.
I think the usage of the term, Islamic, is due to the fact that the word, Christian, has the dual meanings of ‘According to Christianity’ and ‘A Person who Adheres to Christianity’.
So, those who grew up in the Christian tradition often refer to the Muslims as Islamic People, which sounds strange and foreign to us.
Correct terms are important now that some of Islam’s key terms, which have positive meanings in traditional Islam, have been given negative meanings, which has distorted traditional Islam, which in turn results in the unfair treatment of ordinary Muslims.
It is in part semantics, but not entirely. The Army of God is Christian and the members are practicing their version of Christianity.
Let’s not dismiss “semantics” too casually.
“Semantics” means meaning.
True.
Interestingly though, these misguided so-called Muslims who are wreaking havoc in the name of their interpretation of Islam have been called, “The Kharijites” in traditional Islam.
One of the distinguishing characteristics of these people, as pointed out by Islam’s Prophet, is that they’ll profess to be acting out in the name of Islam.
There are other characteristics he pointed out that fit the modern terrorist who proclaims that their actions are according to the teachings of Islam.
But their refutation from the text is not that difficult.
I find it quite saddening that the Muslim leaders (political, religious and academics) won’t hold an international conference and throw these cancerous elements outside the fold of Islam, so there’ll be no doubt in anyone’s mind if they’re Muslims or not.
Sufi has demonstrated that terrorists are doing what the quran says to not do.
therefore, terrorists are not Islamic, despite your ffs insistence otherwise.
That’s incorrect as a sociological and anthropological matter. A religious label includes the groups who identify as such. As I said, The Army of God is a Christian group. So are Quakers. Both exist under the same label.
No other religion has a goal of establishing a global theocracy ruled by their religious law. So all analogies to other religions are incorrect.
Goodbye “Libtard”.
I’m sure poor little Sufi can speak for herself. Who are you, Mother Goose?
Your math is bad and you reasoning is fallacious:
1) If you have 100 terror attacks, 50 Islamic and 50 from “Other Groups”, what does that tell you.
2) No other religion has an espoused goal of establishing a global theocracy ruled by their religious law. So all analogies to other religions are incorrect.
Wasted too much time with you.
I can’t decide whether yours is a parody account, or whether you actually are one of the very stupid wingnuts we don’t get here too often. Oh, we get wingnuts, but not usually with the severity of deficits you display.
Back in the day, we had Major Major (who could compete with Merkin Patriot). You are not anywhere near those heights yet. It’s too possible you are real.
Just for interest could you find us an equivalent action to that cited below, carried out by 70,000 Christian, Jewish, etc. clerics — in the wake of, say, a prolonged air attack by US forces on a hospital?
70,000 Indian Muslim clerics issue fatwa against Isis, the Taliban, al-Qaeda and other terror groups
“saying they were “not Islamic organisations””
Yeah, that’s not how it works in Islam, at all. But this sort of dumb propaganda works on low-info dummies like you.
In Islam, it is basically impossible to “excommunicate” anyone, regardless of what he or she does. This is just another attempt to peddle a feel-good “community cohesion” fairytale with people lying about the supposedly non-Islamic character of someone doing “bad things”.
You can’t say someone is a Muslim only as long as they do not perpetrate actions that you consider to be un-Islamic. That’s simply not logical. San Bernardino murderers didn’t magically stop being Muslims the moment they opened fire.
But Islamist apologists in general will not tell their readers that, because they want to be able to spread Islamophiliac propaganda.
For example, center of Muslim learning, Al-Azhar University regarding Islamic State says: “No believer can be declared an apostate, regardless of his sins.”
So regarding this article, and every time we hear that “Islamic State Muslims were excommunicated/proclaimed not to be “real” Muslims” by someone, we can be sure that it is a lie.
Are you also expecting a critique of your blackest of holes, and very real terrorist threat, Christianism, as you might call it?
Muslims are responsible for the Crusades. Fail.
Oh FFS. Another illiterate who gets his history from obscure wingnut Internet sites.
As “Islamism” does not exist, it is not a very real threat, now is it.
Nonsense. If Buddhism happened to be the dominant Middle East religion, we’d be clamoring today about Buddha as the great satan. We invade and occupy their countries, and terrorism is the natural (albeit symbolic) way that they fight back.
Maybe you can tell me something, RPDC. I said the same thing back in 2001 and 2003, and the response by more than a few american goon squads was to stalk, harass, rob, and torture me.
Why do you get away with saying such things?
Just wondering.
Best
No other religion has a goal of establishing a global theocracy ruled by their religious law. So all analogies to other religions are incorrect.
“No other religion has a goal of establishing a global theocracy ruled by their religious law.”
Don’t be silly; Nazism, Soviet-style Communism and Capitalism all have/had that goal. And Capitalism is getting alarmingly close.
Now, you may think those are not religions, but, if you do, you’re wrong.
Greenwald’s story here is especially important and useful for being a national consolidation of what have, troublingly, mostly remained local stories. Mass media not exactly trying hard to connect the dots.
One more example of the media being part of the problem — they can’t get enough angles to keep that story on that couple in San Bernardino going. And while that was one of the larger mass shootings this year in America it was, in the sad context, just one of the larger mass shootings this year in America.
America’s current defense posture has been largely predicated upon the perception that Islamic extremists are violently opposed to the very principles upon which modern, secular democracies in the west are founded on. This perception is being used by western nations to generate a degree of anti-Muslim animus necessary to engendering broad based political support for its protracted Global war on terror. They do this in spite of the fact the US state department was instrumental in aiding the Saudi effort to establish hundreds of Wahhabi Madrases around the world for decades. With every new revelation concerning the ongoing complicity of America and its allies in the funding and arming of various Islamic extremist elements in a realpolitik divide and conquer strategy of pitting Sunni Muslims against their Shia brethren, the broad based political support upon which democratic societies rely is slowly eroded. Thus it is necessary to construct evermore threatening narratives to sustain the illusion that the free peoples of the world are perpetually in imminent danger of being attacked by Muslim extremists anywhere and at anytime by any means necessary to affect their desired political outcomes.
How, then, can we blame those who, in taking the state at its word, fearfully view all Muslims as an immediate existential threat? After all, it is virtually impossible to divine the intent of any particular Muslim, or Islamic institution, until their alleged hidden intentions have been revealed by the very agencies who have been tasked to maintain the illusion of Islam’s unremitting surreptitious and nefarious intentions. There is nothing more natural then to react with violent aggression toward those whose very presence has the alleged potential of violently affecting you, your family, and your way of life. How, in good conscience, can a like-minded jury of peers convict anyone who has acted in a manner that is wholly consistent with those of the state to which they have sworn allegiance?
If what you’re saying is, that defense policy, internal security and police strategy, and public perception of Muslims is based on conjured fear, on rhetoric, you may be on to something.
http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit/
Did I give the impression that there is an “if” involved? Oh dear, apparently I too have been infected!
“AmBush is killing. Killing is fun” … (repeat, repeat, again and again). Lines from the movie: “A Rumor of War” (1980).
It’s classical “operant” conditioning …
AmTrump is hating. Hating is fun. Hate your opponents. Hate your enemies. Hate any one and every body who is not of your own self image. The most extreme form of narcissism, is it not?
How do they sell the “War on Terrorism” … let me count the ways.
Any way you look at it, 81:1 is a ratio that means there’s something very wrong with the campaign coverage. ~ Eric Boehlert
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/12/11/abc-world-news-tonight-has-devoted-less-than-on/207428
Thanks Joanne, I’ll have to check that movie out.
<Blockquote.It’s classical “operant” conditioning …
I viewed a speech given my Chomsky wherein he describes “intellectuals” as “the herd of independent minds.”
Excerpt of speech:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ0jIYPfA-s
Deja Vu … 2001 – . Group think … herd mentality … classical “operant” conditioning transmitted via mainstream (network TV) media, broadcast radio and global internet.
And, most importantly, via behaviorist approaches to education…
Suffice to say, I’m waltzing with Sanders’ supporters while others are clicking their heels with Trump.
” How, then, can we blame those who, in taking the state at its word, …”
That is the heart of the problem.
How, then, I pose the question back to you, can those same persons, who have been lied to about Vietnam (Gulf of Tonkin incident), and where 58,000 American soldiers would ultimate die?
About Iraq (non-existent WMD) where more than 1 million innocent Iraqis lost their lives (the Lancet) and millions more got displaced?
About 911 where Saudi nationals comprised 19 of the 21 individuals purported to have carried out the atrocity while nothing happened to Saudi Arabia whom we knew along, to sponsor Wahabism, a particularly virulent and extreme brand of Islam known to be the main incubator of terrorists?
About fighting ISIS where it has now been exposed that the US has known along about the sources of its funding from oil sales to Turkey, which we did nothing about and hoped no one would ever find out about, until Russia entered the scene?
How can anyone after all this – and these are just a few – still take the state at its word???
The answer to this question relies on the presupposition that most Americans are aware of these facts; they are not.
Although there is an answer to the broader question of why people are predisposed to believing or rationalizing a lie in the face of the truth, it is far to involved for a forum of this nature. Personally, I believe that the truth has its way with everyone in time; pain and suffering are often the best teachers.
” The answer to this question relies on the presupposition that most Americans are aware of these facts; they are not. ”
Ignorance is often not an excuse in a democracy. Public discourse, even with a twisted media, affords at the very minimum, a chance for the public to be lied to or told the truth.
Either way, the public knows something. Even if that something is nothing. Still, none of it is excusable.
kristallnacht
Nazis never change.
Man arrested over California mosque fire investigated as ‘intentional act’
No one injured in fire but people at the mosque at Islamic Center in Palm Springs described hearing a ‘loud boom’ and seeing flames
Associated Press in Coachella, California
Saturday 12 December 2015 13.54 EST
[Excerpt]
On Saturday, the Los Angeles Times reported that Carl Dial, 23, was arrested around 9pm on Friday on charges including commission of a hate crime, arson, maliciously setting a fire and second-degree burglary.
(cont.)
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/12/california-mosque-firebombed-investigation-no-suspect
Who – if anybody – is advising Donald Trump?
The GOP frontrunner’s statements appear to be drafted on the
fly and while several figures play key roles the loss of his political adviser in August is being felt
Ed Pilkington in New York and Ben Jacobs in Washington
Saturday 12 December 2015 07.00 EST
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/12/who-if-anybody-is-advising-donald-trump
“Who – if anybody – is advising Donald Trump?”
—-
His lower self.
Joseph Goebbels:
George Orwell:
http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit/
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/12/words-on-war-a-summons-to-writers-orwell-lecture
Let’s get rid of all those bad people that have the gall to cover their heads with cloth because they may be hiding bombs. I love the irony of the special head coverings the kkk
Wear. They aren’t fkd up at all.
There is a tremendous opportunity here for a populist politician to exacerbate the tensions and propel themselves into power. I wonder if anyone will seize it.
She has…
“She has . . .”
Do you refer to Killary? If she’s a populist, it’s only to the portion of the populace resigned to political lives of LOTEism.
“ How dreadful are the curses which Islam lays on its votaries… the fanatical frenzy is as dangerous in a man as rabies in a dog… In Islamic law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine…. the influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Islam is a militant and proselytizing faith.”
–Sir Winston Churchill, from his book “The River War,” 1st ed., 2: 248-250. London: Longmans, 1899.
Tell me the number of non-Muslims killed by Muslims over the last century or so, compared to the number of Muslims killed by non-Muslims over the last century or so…
Well the Muslims had a bad century, but that doesn’t prove anything. Now that the US is selling all the latest in weapons to Saudi Arabia, they are making up for lost ground.
To be fair to Churchill, he despised not only Muslims but basically anyone who resisted colonial rule.
“I do not admit … that a great wrong has been done to the Red
Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race … has come in and taken their place.”
-the same Churchill
You think that Churchill (a leader of brutal colonist empire who was starving and lynching nation of British-India – thousands and thousands of Muslims and Hindus were massacred, starved, lynched and killed by the British empire in British India) was such a best thing to happen to the world, that his utter garbage like that will be taken as a ‘mark’ on stone!
When Churchill presided over the Bengal famine of 1943 (much of it in the area now held by the modern Muslim nation of Bangladesh) he was responsible for 1.5 million deaths, but presumably it hit men and women equally. Maybe that’s not so retrograde.
“These sentiments are by no means universal and there are some positive stories of Americans pushing back.”
But of course, you chose not to present those positive stories in the same exploitive hyperbolic tabloid manner that you presented the negative stories.
Yes, you sound like someone eager to hear more positive stories about Americans fighting back against anti-Muslim extremism.
Are you finding too much news coverage sympathetic to innocent Muslims being harassed by anti-Muslim extremists?
Anti-Muslim ‘extremists’ are committing these vile acts, yet Greenwald tends to portray them as indicative of average American sentiments.
Greenwald is pointing out that there has been a very large rise in anti-Muslim hatred. Show me where in this piece where he says or even hints at that being “indicative of average American sentiments.”
If any group – your group – was being unfairly singled out, harassed, and beat-up (plus made chic & acceptable in the media by a hate-filled, bigoted presidential candidate), do you think that it’s wrong to point that out?
Not everyone that posts comments actually read Glenn’s
Column , or understand
@Frank
No, actually, he doesn’t.
But you might want to review a little info on “average American sentiments”:
Americans think Islam is ‘at odds’ with US values, see discrimination against Muslims
Try not to freak out over my using RT as a source. The studies are from the Public Religion Research Institute, which, I think you’ll find, is perfectly credible:
Welcome to America, the land of the free and the home of the intolerant bigots. Nothing gets the hate ramped up like a dose of fear and bigots on TV spewing a bunch of hateful bullshit!! It’s utterly detestable to see and hear all the crap that’s been going on of late, that makes me want to puke. What’s worse is this attack will “inspire” more demands of forfeiting more of our civil rights. The FBI is relentless wanting to ban encryption and increase surveillance as a new way of doing things, all, of course, in the name of national security. If anyone actually pays attention, the terrorists are winning this battle. Then we have all the “hawks” wanting to rain holy hell and send soldiers to die in a war they can’t win. This is madness!! Let’s ALL stand back, catch our breaths and think this through before going off the deep end again. Also a little love and compassion to our fellow Americans, we’re all in this together.
Seems like a bunch of crazy kooks committing criminal acts, and not typical of the average normal rational American citizen.
So, the obvious lesson is this:
If you’re a Muslim in America, go out and buy a gun to protect yourself from all of the normal rational Americans who want to harm you if given a chance.
The FBI is Rounding Up Muslims and Charging them With Terrorism for Buying Cellphones
One incident took place in Michigan, where three men from Texas were arrested after buying prepaid phones from a Wal-Mart.
By John Vibes / The Free Thought Project December 11, 2015
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/fbi-rounding-muslims-and-charging-them-terrorism-buying-cellphones
Report: ABC World News Tonight Has Devoted 81 Minutes To Trump, One Minute To Sanders
Blog ››› December 11, 2015 9:40 AM EST ››› ERIC BOEHLERT
Any way you look at it, 81:1 is a ratio that means there’s something very wrong with the campaign coverage. ~ Eric Boehlert
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/12/11/abc-world-news-tonight-has-devoted-less-than-on/207428
This article, also posted today at TI,
https://theintercept.com/2015/12/12/terrorist-attacks-spark-crackdown-constitutional-changes-in-france/
paired with Greenwald’s above, detail the dangers of allowing fear to dictate responses. If we don’t take heed, then the slide from proto-fascism into the full blown article will be spectacular to witness. I would prefer not to live in such “interesting times”. :-s
The Muslim student in Seattle who died last Saturday, died only a half-block from where I live. I remember the emergency vehicles going by. It’s really eerie to think that an anti-Muslim hate crime might have happened here, as this neighborhood is an uber-liberal overweening-politically-correct gentrified gay ghetto. If such a crime can happen here, it can happen *anywhere*.
We’re seeing not only a self-reinforcing cycle, but a new justification. I heard it often enough from older Californians, “well, we had to relocate those people for their own safety, they weren’t safe here during the war.”
Look for that to be the next justification for relocation, detention and/or deportation. It’s sort of like, when a mob sets someone’s house on fire, that the residents would be forcibly removed elsewhere and the original perpetrators left as is.
I’m still waiting for the righteous backlash against Christian terrorists like Robert Dear, who shot up a Planned Parenthood clinic. Frankly, I’m living in fear that some Old Testament-thumping lunatic with a gun will shoot up my neighborhood because he saw two men kissing or some people were praying in a park to his jealous, vengeful god, but calling him Allah instead of Jehovah. We need to keep a close watch on Christian ministers to ensure they don’t preach Old Testament barbarity, which inflames their followers into more terrorist attacks.
This entire jihad about redefining “terrorism” to cover every single act of violence is nothing but typical brainless nonsense by the Islamophiliac anti-gun imbeciles.
Anti-abortion murderous violence exists. But it is a minor threat: 8 dead + 17 wounded since early 1990s. And in the past decade, violence against abortion clinics consists of about 20 events, mostly arson.
So compared to Muslim terrorism, this is literally a non-existent threat.
Or, to put it in vivid terms: in the last 25 years, anti-abortion terrorists have killed fewer Americans than the Muslim terrorist Nidal “Workplace Violence” Hasan did in a few minutes in 2009.
Under your method of quantifying risk, Americans are in far greater danger from swimming pools than from Muslim terrorists, correct?
Since you like stats:
“Americans Muslims are 5,000 Percent More Likely to Commit a Terror Attack
“Muslims account for only about 1 percent of the U.S. population but account for about half of terrorist attacks since 9/11. That means Muslims in the United States are about 5,000 percent more likely to commit terrorist attacks than non-Muslims.””
http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/12/09/why-trumps-winning-9-things-the-dc-media-wont-tell-you-about-islam/
If you want to use body count as a criterion, the FBI figures on US homicides are impressive enough.
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/tables/expanded-homicide-data/expanded_homicide_data_table_8_murder_victims_by_weapon_2010-2014.xls
8,124 firearms homicides for 2014 are a form of violence, and perhaps they don’t lend themselves to simple explanations. But it’s considerable enough.
Over 90% of the terrorist acts committed in the US are by non-Muslims.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/non-muslims-carried-out-more-than-90-of-all-terrorist-attacks-in-america/5333619
The odds of being killed by a terrorist who is Christian rather than a Muslim is self-evidently much, MUCH higher. And yet no one is calling for closing down churches or blocking Christians from entering the US until we “can figure out what is going on.”
Read your local news. Are you seeing a lot of Muslim murderers, or is it the same as it’s been throughout your life – the dominant religion of murderers is non-Muslim? Does it even surprise you that if you are killed by some psychotic, blood-thirsty murderer that it will most likely be a Christian?
How brainwashed do you have to be by the media and Christian hate groups in this country to ignore the reality of what you see every day with your own eyes? To buy into to the religious hatred and anti-Muslim extremism being pushed 24/7 by the media and rightwing Christian hate groups speaks volumes at how malleable American minds are.
Some more fun statistics, from a religious news website.
http://www.religionnews.com/2015/12/10/americans-fear-terrorism-mass-shootings-often-muslims-well/
It seems that the more fervently Christian one is, the more one is inclined to feel threatened, of terrorism or Muslims in particular. So what Glenn is talking about is sectarian in nature.
“Most Americans (83 percent) say they know little or nothing about the religious practices and beliefs of Muslims. And 62 percent say they seldom or never have conversations with anyone they know to be Muslim.
A similar percentage is afraid of spiders, because, after all, they know nothing about them except hearing that some spiders have killed some people.
The Koran is available in paperback in easily understood English and takes no longer to read than the New Testament. Then, at least some formerly ignorant people will be able to focus all their energies on spider terrorism.
But they can read books, right?
Here’s one simple primer on Islam:
“The Elements of Islam”, at http://www.zahrapublications.com/book-ElementsOfIslam.php#bookTitle
Thanks Mr. Greenwald. I don’t always agree with you politically but your integrity and dedication are unassailable.
And so the terrorist strategies find success, a direct hit on the moderate “gray area”, as governments respond by clamping down on their own populations.
When Nazi Germany rose, it had some competition. It didn’t have the highest GDP in the world, for one. The allies, combined, were far more powerful economically and militarily than the Axis powers. Nazi Germany could therefore be contained. I’m not sure people realize how dangerous it would be for Fascism to rise in a country like the US.
Do you know what the “zi” in Nazi stands for?
No, I totally don’t not about National Socialism. What a ridiculous talking point that is. Yea, the main problem with Nazi Germany was that it attempted to let workers own and control the means of production. Totally.
Thanks, Glenn, for assembling these in one commentary!
May I respectfully point out, however, that many of them were reported in these threads, on TI, as soon or sooner than . . . pretty much everyone other than (occasionally) local media?
So, acknowledgement to your readers and regulars is due, as well.
And I think you missed the hateful attack on a young woman on a bus, reported yesterday by Pedinska.
~Doug
. . . a bus on Michigan Avenue, in Chicago.
Glenn, strangely missing from your list of causes is the handiwork of the Islamic State. This obscene backlash is its exact intention, to make the West believe they are fighting a battle against all of Islam (well, Sunni Islam). If you paid attention to IS’ actions and not just the West’s, you would see this.
The fuckwit lives! Nate, nothing is “missing” from Glenn’s article. He is entirely aware of what ISIS wants, as his Twitter account makes amply clear.
Please, stay gone. It’s so nice when you take your contrarian concern trolling elsewhere.
Mona, you digital lapdog, get back at the foot of Glenn’s bed.
I guess you missed this.
Oh thanks Jose. So it’s not a case of a lack of attention, but Glenn’s willfull ignorance of his own colleague’s work.
Prosecutorial journalism and the U.S. is the defendant.
I think you’re the one being willfully ignorant. As Mona said, on Twitter Glenn has been making this very point.
I’m judging this article, not his compendium of Tweets.
Nah, you’re just doing fuckwit redux.
And you’re being your usual charming self.
Hi there ankle-biter, we are very sorry that Glenn does not address all of your concerns in this and other articles, and that he willfully chooses to write about that which he thinks is important, not what you are droning on about. It must be difficult to feel so left out. There, there. Perhaps The Blaze would be a good place for you? Or, any number of other reactionary asshole sites that would satisfy your whiny list of complaints by buttering you up and telling you how important your blathering is. You might feel loved. That would be nice for you.
I’m fairly confident that the Islamic State’s actions and strategy are important and don’t believe that is a novel or controversial conclusion
As for the Blaze, I’ll pass!! Furthermore, my comment is in no way reactionary. Reactionary is “invade Iraq and Syria!” or “Ban all Muslims!” I merely pointed out an omission of a critical causal factor. IS wants to inflame the West and not mentioning that in this piece is a glaring shortcoming as it is the prime factor.
Lastly, calling my comments a “whiny list of complaints” is hardly an insult. Your decision to not address the actual comment and instead resort to attacking me undermines your comment.
“I’m fairly confident that the Islamic State’s actions and strategy are important and don’t believe that is a novel or controversial conclusion”
No, the aims of ISIS are so obvious that only an ignorant fool needs reminding. Very few fools read these articles, I’m guessing, therefore, you are a petty ankle-biter.
But the obviously incendiary comments by Trump being a cause needs reminding?
Your retort is weak. And no actually, IS’ intentions are not common knowledge. Otherwise, people wouldn’t be so willing to fall into its trap.
Nate => http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Concern_troll
Uh-huh! Still needs swatting.
From your link:
Uh oh.
Glenn has written the exact same thing numerous times that “his own college” wrote in the referenced link, which you are well aware of, and if you weren’t willfully choosing to play the roll of “fuckwit” you wouldn’t be bothering to lie about it.
Being a GG apologist must be exhausting. It’s like you’re everywhere!
When Glenn says “there are numerous causes, most of them obvious” but doesn’t include the Islamic State – which he presumably is well aware of – comments such as mine are fair game. Tellingly, you all don’t disagree with my claim of IS deserving to be mentioned. You just excuse Glenn’s oversight because his Twitter comments allegedly cover it. But it is not my responsibility to sift through his thousands of Tweets to supplement an article as you see fit. Twitter comments are not my news source. Furthermore, do you afford such an excuse to others, including those you disagree with? Are their articles’ shortcomings softened by cherry picking Twitter for mitigating posts?
Ultimately, if Glenn simply forgot, he can always update his article. I won’t hold my breath.
Nate, if we’re going to blame ISIS for the actions of westerners against the muslims who are their own co-citizens, then it seems we must go further back and, again, blame the west for the creation of ISIS. After all, that’s no longer a controversial assertion:
http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13940830000777
How far back should we go? Surely even you must see the fallacy in shouting, “The Devil made me do it!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kaiLcwHXB4
Pedinska, I do blame the U.S. for its role in creating the Islamic State, it’s indisputable. If this was an article about the origins of IS, that would be one of the key factors.
However, I don’t let that fact close all subsequent discussion. The article here is about the retched response by Americans and one of the causes is IS’ actions and strategy. They want to create a rift.
Furthermore, IS has to be held accountable for its actions at some point. The U.S. isn’t making them hate the Shia and the polytheists, it isn’t making them crusade across the ME, isn’t making them use child soldiers, murdering unarmed people, and handing out women as war trophies to its soldiers.
Furthermore, IS has to be held accountable … use child soldiers, murdering unarmed people, and handing out women as war trophies to its soldiers …
Errata: Change IS to US. Change child soldiers to children of US soldiers.
Change women to girls.
You’re welcome.
Was editorializing my post cathartic? I sure hope so.
The handywork of ISIS is missing from the article and after reading your comment I was struck by the fact that you, Nate, have the unique attribute of being able to place either the letter ‘K’ or the letter ‘G’ in front of your name and it won’t change the pronunciation. Go on, try it.
See!
From the americanthinker:
May 31, 2014
The Greatest Murder Machine in History
By Mike Konrad
When one thinks of mass murder, Hitler comes to mind. If not Hitler, then Tojo, Stalin, or Mao. Credit is given to the 20th-century totalitarians as the worst species of tyranny to have ever arisen. However, the alarming truth is that Islam has killed more than any of these, and may surpass all of them combined in numbers and cruelty.
The enormity of the slaughters of the “religion of peace” are so far beyond comprehension that even honest historians overlook the scale. When one looks beyond our myopic focus, Islam is the greatest killing machine in the history of mankind, bar none.
The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. — Will Durant, as quoted on Daniel Pipes site.
Conservative estimates place the number at 80 million dead Indians.
According to some calculations, the Indian (subcontinent) population decreased by 80 million between 1000 (conquest of Afghanistan) and 1525 (end of Delhi Sultanate). — Koenrad Elst as quoted on Daniel Pipes site
80 Million?! The conquistadors’ crimes pale into insignificance at that number. No wonder Hitler admired Islam as a fighting religion. He stood in awe of Islam, whose butchery even he did not surpass.
Over 110 Million Blacks were killed by Islam.
… a minumum of 28 Million African were enslaved in the Muslim Middle East. Since, at least, 80 percent of those captured by Muslim slave traders were calculated to have died before reaching the slave market, it is believed that the death toll from 1400 years of Arab and Muslim slave raids into Africa could have been as high as 112 Millions. When added to the number of those sold in the slave markets, the total number of African victims of the trans-Saharan and East African slave trade could be significantly higher than 140 Million people. — John Allembillah Azumah, author of The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa: A Quest for Inter-religious Dialogue
Add just those two numbers alone together, and Islam has surpassed the victims of 20th-century totalitarianism. However, it does not end there. Add the millions who died at the hand of Muslims in the Sudan in our lifetime.
Much of Islamic slavery was sexual in nature, with a preference for women. Those men who were captured were castrated. The mulatto children of the women were often killed, which explains why Islam was not demographically shifted towards the black race, unlike slaves in the West, who bore children to breed a mestizo class. Add in those dead children; and we arrive at well over 200 million.
Remember that in the 7th century, North Africa was almost totally Christian. What happened to them?
By the year 750, a hundred years after the conquest of Jerusalem, at least 50 percent of the world’s Christians found themselves under Muslim hegemony… Today there is no indigenous Christianity in the region [of Northwest Africa], no communities of Christians whose history can be traced to antiquity.– “Christianity Face to Face with Islam,” CERC
What happened to those Christian millions? Some converted. The rest? Lost to history.
We know that over 1 million Europeans were enslaved by Barbary Pirates. How many died is anybody’s guess.
…for the 250 years between 1530 and 1780, the figure could easily have been as high as 1,250,000 – BBC
In the Middle Ages…
…many slaves were passed through Armenia and were castrated there to fill the Muslim demand for eunuchs. — Slavery in Early Medieval Europe.
The same practice ran through Islamic Spain. North Europeans captured from raids up to Iceland, or purchased, were butchered in the castratoriums of Iberia. Many died from the operations that ran for centuries.
The number of dead from the Muslim conquest of the Balkans and Southern Italy is unknown, but again the numbers add up, surely into the millions over the centuries. Don’t forget the 1.5 million Armenian Christians killed by the Turks during WWI. We do know that over five centuries, vast numbers of Christian boys were kidnapped to become Islamic Janissary mercenaries for the Turks. Add those in, too.
Muslims prized blonde women for their harems; and so enslaved Slavic women were purchased in the bazaars of the Crimean Caliphate. In Muslim Spain, an annual tribute of 100 Visigothic [blonde] women was required from Spain’s Cantabrian coast.
For decades, 100 virgins per year were required by the Muslim rulers of Spain from the conquered population. The tribute was only stopped when the Spaniards began fighting back — Jihad: Islam’s 1,300 Year War Against Western Civilisation
Add in the death toll from the Reconquista and the numbers climb higher.
Research has shown that the Dark Ages were not caused by the Goths, who eventually assimilated and Christianized:
…the real destroyers of classical civilization were the Muslims. It was the Arab Invasions… which broke the unity of the Mediterranean world and turned the Middle Sea — previously one of the world’s most important trading highways — into a battleground. It was only after the appearance of Islam… that the cities of the West, which depended upon the Mediterranean trade for their survival, began to die. — Islam Caused the Dark Ages
Add in those unknown millions who died as a consequence.
How many know the horrors of the conquest of Malaysia? The Buddhists of Thailand and Malaysia were slaughtered en masse.
When attacked and massacred by the Muslims, the Buddhists initially did not make any attempt to escape from their murderers. They accepted death with an air of fatalism and destiny. And hence they are not around today to tell their story. – History of Jihad.org
We may never know the numbers of dead.
After Muslims came to power in the early 15th century, animist hill peoples eventually disappeared due to their enslavement and ‘incorporation’ into the Muslim population of Malaya, Sumatra, Borneo, and Java via raids, tribute and purchase, especially of children. Java was the largest exporter of slaves around 1500. — Islam Monitor
In the same manner, Islam arrived in the Philippines. Only the appearance of the Spanish stopped a total collapse, and confined Islam to the southern islands.
The coming of the Spanish saved the Philippines from Islam, except for the Southern tip where the population had been converted to Islam.– History of Jihad.org
Again, the number of dead is unknown; but add them to the total.
The animist Filipinos were eager to ally with the Spanish against Islam. In fact, much of Southeast Asia welcomed the Spanish and Portuguese as preferable to Islam.
…from the 17th century successive Thai kings allied themselves with the seafaring Western powers – the Portuguese and the Dutch and succeeded in staving off the threat of Islam from the Muslim Malays and their Arab overlords.– History of Jihad.org
A few galleons and muskets were not enough to conquer Asia. Islam had made the Europeans initially appear as liberators; and to a certain extent they were. Who were the real imperialists?
Even today…
…Malaysian Jihadis are plotting to transform multi-ethnic Malaysia into an Islamic Caliphate, and fomenting trouble in Southern Thailand.– History of Jihad.org
Add this all up. The African victims. The Indian victims. The European victims. Add in the Armenian genocide. Then add in the lesser known, but no doubt quite large number of victims of Eastern Asia. Add in the jihad committed by Muslims against China, which was invaded in 651 AD. Add in the Crimean Khanate predations on the Slavs, especially their women.
Though the numbers are not clear, what is obvious is that Islam is the greatest murder machine in history bar none, possibly exceeding 250 million dead. Possibly one-third to one-half or more of all those killed by war or slavery in history can be traced to Islam; and this is just a cursory examination.
Now consider the over 125 Million women today who have been genitally mutilated for Islamic honor’s sake. In spite of what apologists tell you, the practice is almost totally confined to Islamic areas.
New information from Iraqi Kurdistan raises the possibility that the problem is more prevalent in the Middle East than previously believed and that FGM is far more tied to religion than many Western academics and activists admit. – “Is Female Genital Mutilation an Islamic Problem?” ME Quarterly
Once thought concentrated in Africa, FGM has now been discovered to be common wherever Islam is found.
There are indications that FGM might be a phenomenon of epidemic proportions in the Arab Middle East. Hosken, for instance, notes that traditionally all women in the Persian Gulf region were mutilated. Arab governments refuse to address the problem. — “Is Female Genital Mutilation an Islamic Problem?” ME Quarterly
Remember that this has gone on for 1400 years; and was imposed on a population that had been formerly Christian or pagan.
FGM is practiced on large scale in Islamic Indonesia; and is increasing.
…far from scaling down, the problem of FGM in Indonesia has escalated sharply. The mass ceremonies in Bandung have grown bigger and more popular every year. — Guardian
The horrified British author of that Guardian article is still deluded that Islam does not support FGM, when in fact it is now settled that FGM is a core Islamic practice. Islamic women have been brainwashed to support their own abuse.
Abu Sahlieh further cited Muhammad as saying, “Circumcision is a sunna (tradition) for the men and makruma (honorable deed) for the women.” — “Is Female Genital Mutilation an Islamic Problem?” ME Quarterly
What other tyranny does this? Not even the Nazis mutilated their own women!
Unlike the 20th-century totalitarians whose killing fury consumed themselves, reducing their longevity, Islam paces itself. In the end, though slower, Islam has killed and tortured far more than any other creed, religious or secular. Unlike secular tyranny, Islam, by virtue of its polygamy and sexual predations, reproduces itself and increases.
Other tyrannies are furious infections, which burn hot, but are soon overcome. Islam is a slow terminal cancer, which metastasizes, and takes over. It never retreats. Its methods are more insidious, often imperceptible at first, driven by demographics. Like cancer, excision may be the only cure.
So whenever you read about this or that Israeli outrage — and there may be truth to the complaint — place the news in context. Look whom the Israelis are fighting against. Islam is like nothing else in history.
Mike Konrad is the pen name of an American who is not Jewish, Latin, or Arab. He runs a website, http://latinarabia.com, where he discusses the subculture of Arabs in Latin America. He wishes his Spanish were better.
When one thinks of mass murder, Hitler comes to mind. If not Hitler, then Tojo, Stalin, or Mao. Credit is given to the 20th-century totalitarians as the worst species of tyranny to have ever arisen. However, the alarming truth is that Islam has killed more than any of these, and may surpass all of them combined in numbers and cruelty.
The enormity of the slaughters of the “religion of peace” are so far beyond comprehension that even honest historians overlook the scale. When one looks beyond our myopic focus, Islam is the greatest killing machine in the history of mankind, bar none.
The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. — Will Durant, as quoted on Daniel Pipes site.
Conservative estimates place the number at 80 million dead Indians.
According to some calculations, the Indian (subcontinent) population decreased by 80 million between 1000 (conquest of Afghanistan) and 1525 (end of Delhi Sultanate). — Koenrad Elst as quoted on Daniel Pipes site
80 Million?! The conquistadors’ crimes pale into insignificance at that number. No wonder Hitler admired Islam as a fighting religion. He stood in awe of Islam, whose butchery even he did not surpass.
Over 110 Million Blacks were killed by Islam.
… a minumum of 28 Million African were enslaved in the Muslim Middle East. Since, at least, 80 percent of those captured by Muslim slave traders were calculated to have died before reaching the slave market, it is believed that the death toll from 1400 years of Arab and Muslim slave raids into Africa could have been as high as 112 Millions. When added to the number of those sold in the slave markets, the total number of African victims of the trans-Saharan and East African slave trade could be significantly higher than 140 Million people. — John Allembillah Azumah, author of The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa: A Quest for Inter-religious Dialogue
Add just those two numbers alone together, and Islam has surpassed the victims of 20th-century totalitarianism. However, it does not end there. Add the millions who died at the hand of Muslims in the Sudan in our lifetime.
Much of Islamic slavery was sexual in nature, with a preference for women. Those men who were captured were castrated. The mulatto children of the women were often killed, which explains why Islam was not demographically shifted towards the black race, unlike slaves in the West, who bore children to breed a mestizo class. Add in those dead children; and we arrive at well over 200 million.
Remember that in the 7th century, North Africa was almost totally Christian. What happened to them?
By the year 750, a hundred years after the conquest of Jerusalem, at least 50 percent of the world’s Christians found themselves under Muslim hegemony… Today there is no indigenous Christianity in the region [of Northwest Africa], no communities of Christians whose history can be traced to antiquity.– “Christianity Face to Face with Islam,” CERC
What happened to those Christian millions? Some converted. The rest? Lost to history.
We know that over 1 million Europeans were enslaved by Barbary Pirates. How many died is anybody’s guess.
…for the 250 years between 1530 and 1780, the figure could easily have been as high as 1,250,000 – BBC
In the Middle Ages…
…many slaves were passed through Armenia and were castrated there to fill the Muslim demand for eunuchs. — Slavery in Early Medieval Europe.
The same practice ran through Islamic Spain. North Europeans captured from raids up to Iceland, or purchased, were butchered in the castratoriums of Iberia. Many died from the operations that ran for centuries.
The number of dead from the Muslim conquest of the Balkans and Southern Italy is unknown, but again the numbers add up, surely into the millions over the centuries. Don’t forget the 1.5 million Armenian Christians killed by the Turks during WWI. We do know that over five centuries, vast numbers of Christian boys were kidnapped to become Islamic Janissary mercenaries for the Turks. Add those in, too.
Muslims prized blonde women for their harems; and so enslaved Slavic women were purchased in the bazaars of the Crimean Caliphate. In Muslim Spain, an annual tribute of 100 Visigothic [blonde] women was required from Spain’s Cantabrian coast.
For decades, 100 virgins per year were required by the Muslim rulers of Spain from the conquered population. The tribute was only stopped when the Spaniards began fighting back — Jihad: Islam’s 1,300 Year War Against Western Civilisation
Add in the death toll from the Reconquista and the numbers climb higher.
Research has shown that the Dark Ages were not caused by the Goths, who eventually assimilated and Christianized:
…the real destroyers of classical civilization were the Muslims. It was the Arab Invasions… which broke the unity of the Mediterranean world and turned the Middle Sea — previously one of the world’s most important trading highways — into a battleground. It was only after the appearance of Islam… that the cities of the West, which depended upon the Mediterranean trade for their survival, began to die. — Islam Caused the Dark Ages
Add in those unknown millions who died as a consequence.
How many know the horrors of the conquest of Malaysia? The Buddhists of Thailand and Malaysia were slaughtered en masse.
When attacked and massacred by the Muslims, the Buddhists initially did not make any attempt to escape from their murderers. They accepted death with an air of fatalism and destiny. And hence they are not around today to tell their story. – History of Jihad.org
We may never know the numbers of dead.
After Muslims came to power in the early 15th century, animist hill peoples eventually disappeared due to their enslavement and ‘incorporation’ into the Muslim population of Malaya, Sumatra, Borneo, and Java via raids, tribute and purchase, especially of children. Java was the largest exporter of slaves around 1500. — Islam Monitor
In the same manner, Islam arrived in the Philippines. Only the appearance of the Spanish stopped a total collapse, and confined Islam to the southern islands.
The coming of the Spanish saved the Philippines from Islam, except for the Southern tip where the population had been converted to Islam.– History of Jihad.org
Again, the number of dead is unknown; but add them to the total.
The animist Filipinos were eager to ally with the Spanish against Islam. In fact, much of Southeast Asia welcomed the Spanish and Portuguese as preferable to Islam.
…from the 17th century successive Thai kings allied themselves with the seafaring Western powers – the Portuguese and the Dutch and succeeded in staving off the threat of Islam from the Muslim Malays and their Arab overlords.– History of Jihad.org
A few galleons and muskets were not enough to conquer Asia. Islam had made the Europeans initially appear as liberators; and to a certain extent they were. Who were the real imperialists?
Even today…
…Malaysian Jihadis are plotting to transform multi-ethnic Malaysia into an Islamic Caliphate, and fomenting trouble in Southern Thailand.– History of Jihad.org
Add this all up. The African victims. The Indian victims. The European victims. Add in the Armenian genocide. Then add in the lesser known, but no doubt quite large number of victims of Eastern Asia. Add in the jihad committed by Muslims against China, which was invaded in 651 AD. Add in the Crimean Khanate predations on the Slavs, especially their women.
Though the numbers are not clear, what is obvious is that Islam is the greatest murder machine in history bar none, possibly exceeding 250 million dead. Possibly one-third to one-half or more of all those killed by war or slavery in history can be traced to Islam; and this is just a cursory examination.
Now consider the over 125 Million women today who have been genitally mutilated for Islamic honor’s sake. In spite of what apologists tell you, the practice is almost totally confined to Islamic areas.
New information from Iraqi Kurdistan raises the possibility that the problem is more prevalent in the Middle East than previously believed and that FGM is far more tied to religion than many Western academics and activists admit. – “Is Female Genital Mutilation an Islamic Problem?” ME Quarterly
Once thought concentrated in Africa, FGM has now been discovered to be common wherever Islam is found.
There are indications that FGM might be a phenomenon of epidemic proportions in the Arab Middle East. Hosken, for instance, notes that traditionally all women in the Persian Gulf region were mutilated. Arab governments refuse to address the problem. — “Is Female Genital Mutilation an Islamic Problem?” ME Quarterly
Remember that this has gone on for 1400 years; and was imposed on a population that had been formerly Christian or pagan.
FGM is practiced on large scale in Islamic Indonesia; and is increasing.
…far from scaling down, the problem of FGM in Indonesia has escalated sharply. The mass ceremonies in Bandung have grown bigger and more popular every year. — Guardian
The horrified British author of that Guardian article is still deluded that Islam does not support FGM, when in fact it is now settled that FGM is a core Islamic practice. Islamic women have been brainwashed to support their own abuse.
Abu Sahlieh further cited Muhammad as saying, “Circumcision is a sunna (tradition) for the men and makruma (honorable deed) for the women.” — “Is Female Genital Mutilation an Islamic Problem?” ME Quarterly
What other tyranny does this? Not even the Nazis mutilated their own women!
Unlike the 20th-century totalitarians whose killing fury consumed themselves, reducing their longevity, Islam paces itself. In the end, though slower, Islam has killed and tortured far more than any other creed, religious or secular. Unlike secular tyranny, Islam, by virtue of its polygamy and sexual predations, reproduces itself and increases.
Other tyrannies are furious infections, which burn hot, but are soon overcome. Islam is a slow terminal cancer, which metastasizes, and takes over. It never retreats. Its methods are more insidious, often imperceptible at first, driven by demographics. Like cancer, excision may be the only cure.
So whenever you read about this or that Israeli outrage — and there may be truth to the complaint — place the news in context. Look whom the Israelis are fighting against. Islam is like nothing else in history.
Mike Konrad is the pen name of an American who is not Jewish, Latin, or Arab………………………
#NothingToDoWithIslam
As one reader of the comments section of The Intercept, I am asking that you please use the perhaps unknown to you miracle of Links, followed by excerpts, rather than posting an entire length article or book, which can all be located at the link you would provide.
Generally speaking, actions of Muslims can be grouped into:
1. Bad to evil acts
2. Benign to good acts
3. Excellent acts
When human beings act through the lower consciousness, with anger, vengeance, arrogance, selfishness, injustice, attachments, desires for power, control and resources, etc., they’ll act in bad to evil ways, regardless of the religious and the non-religious paths they profess to adhere to.
Otherwise, they’ll act from benign to good to excellent acts.
So, the Muslims, just like other groups on the planet, have in fact acted in all three kinds of manner over the course of history.
Some focus on the bad to evil acts committed by those who call themselves Muslims, while others only focus on the benign to good to excellent acts, while there are those who point out all kinds.
Usually, those who point out bad to evil acts of Muslims do so because that’s what is reflecting off of their inner selves at that moment.
Same with those who point out other acts.
So, in reality, this commenter is merely reflecting his or her own inner self, and in doing that, s/he is presenting only part of the total reality, which is a distortion.
It’d be nice if s/he would now list all the good to excellent deeds that have been carried out by the Muslims over the course of history in order to balance the picture.
The commenter states:
A lot can be said to refute this premise, but here’s just one small effort:
“Terrorism and other religions” by Juan Cole:
http://www.juancole.com/2013/04/terrorism-other-religions.html
ADDENDUM:
In case of acts committed by Muslims, it’s not that difficult to determine if they are Islamic or not.
All one has to do is understand the Quranic framework, and then see if an act conflicts with it or not.
If it does, then the act is not Islamic.
The Quran is not that big of a book and it’s fairly straightforward — though it requires patience — to understand what it is saying by examining its verses within the context of what else it has stated on a particular subject.
Quite often, one doesn’t need to go to the secondary source of Islam. And in a lot of cases, the historical context is clear from the very contents of the Quran.
That being so — and it is — it’s easy enough to take any scripture out of context and use it to justify an atrocity. Exodus 22:18 — “thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” — was responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in Europe and at least one traumatic episode in colonial America. The order that the abbot gave at the siege of Béziers — “kill them all, God will know his own” — was an entirely out-of-context reference to 2 Timothy 2:19.
This kind of excuse is not the cause of this kind of fanaticism, but simply a symptom. Fanatics of whatever sort don’t seem to have much time for exegesis.
Thanks to you and Sufi Muslim we have a strong wind to sense and sensibility in these commentaries.
Indeed!
Which is why it’s also important, perhaps more, to interpret the text, and an event, through the higher self.
We can see how the recent evil act (the senseless murder of 14 people and injuring several others) is being interpreted through the lower self (anxiety, irrational fear, hatred, selfish motives, prejudice, bigotry, etc.), instead of the higher (justice, hope, lack of irrational fear, calmness, confidence, equality, selflessness, etc.).
In other words, as I have stated elsewhere, they are subduing people’s higher self.
As a well-know prof of ancient history who chooses to remain nameless I find this explanation for the ultimate demise of Classical Civilization risable at best – which brings all of your other material into extremely serious doubt. And my God the sources – Will Durant via Pipes? Are you fucking kidding me? You get a D in my grade book, and the D is only out of sympathy for the time you clearly spent in gathering un-vetted sources.
Btw, pre-modern population statistics are virtually impossible to retrieve; your numbers are utterly bogus, and in modern times it is a simple statistical fact that since the 19th century Christian dominated cultures have been far far greater purveyors of violence than any other cultures – any other assertion is just special pleading (and yes, I include the Soviet Union as such since it was largely Christian culturally despite discouragement of religious practices).
Septic Stew – an apt name indeed for a cloaca dressed like a trollop.
I was surprised to see the planned burning of a book included in a list of (as stated in the headline) “threats” and “violent attacks” against people. Burning a Quran, while in my view a distasteful act, is not a threat or attack against Muslims any more than burning a US flag is a threat or attack against Americans. Unless merely offending somone consitutes “threatening” or “attacking” them, which I don’t believe to be the case.
It always amuses me to see Greenwaldistas apparently puzzled again and again at examples of Greenwald’s irrational, inconsistent, zealous “thinking”.
I mean this is someone who thinks “racist” Charlie Hebdo brought it on themselves, and that people who are actually wielding the biggest power there is – power over life and death, murdering innocents because their vile religion tells them they will go to paradise as a reward – are a “marginalized brutalized powerless innocent minority”. At the same time, he excoriates people burning a hate manual of that “religion”. You really need more proof that he is nuts?
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/01/14/glenn_greenwald_versus_charlie_hebdo_on_the_wrong_side_of_freedom_125253.html
I think some of Glenn’s thinking regarding Charlie Hebdo was a bit muddled. He is far from nuts.
As for your hatred of Islam, you don’t sound much different from the people who drop in at TI to rail about the perfidy of Jews. Same shit, different day.
Good luck living in your bubble of self-delusion. Also make sure you plant a lot of Gharqad trees.
I’m very happy in my bubble. And I don’t need a Gharqad tree. In the words of the great Eric Cartman, “I’m an American, goddamit!”
Gator90- nailed it (as usual). Of course, a core component of her pathology is the inability to see her own pathology…
Says Doctor Dave the Dumb.
As one who vehemently disagreed with much of Glenn’s take on that, I know you are being your usual lying-sack-of-shit self. He neither believes nor said that.
Doesn’t being a hateful tool get tedious?
Mona is exactly correct: Glenn didn’t say it and I know from years of following his work that he doesn’t come close to believing it.
Louise is shamelessly twisting the truth.
Full disclosure: I agreed with Glenn on that issue and argued stridently with Mona about it.
“he doesn’t come close to believing it.”
Yes he does.
Burning a Quran, while in my view a distasteful act, is not a threat or attack against Muslims any more than burning a US flag is a threat or attack against Americans.
I would think this would be treated like the KKK cross burnings. As long as it isn’t happening in front of a mosque or a Muslim’s house, it doesn’t constitute a “threat” per se. I would be interested to see what Glenn has to say about that.
“KKK cross burnings”
I noticed the caption for the KKK clown photo that the politically correct term is “cross lighting“.
What a great world it would be if there were no hatred at all, and we were as concerned for Meccan Muslims, Christians and various other Kafir in ISIS-held territories who are being hunted, beheaded, and buried in mass graves as we are for the people in the US who (might) be subjected to seeing a book set on fire in full view of the public. Heaven forbid a politician utter a politically-incorrect policy concept and not be punished here at home the way a woman in Syria might be punished for daring to go out without proper cover garments, escorted as she should be by male family members.
The struggle continues, I guess.
…the way a woman in Syria might be punished for daring to go out without proper cover garments, escorted as she should be by male family members.
Oh, here we go with the woe-is-wimminz bullshit. You do realize that women didn’t have to do that in either Iraq OR Syria until the US and it’s western henchhomonculi fucked the countries up, right? Right?
Save us from people who think war is the way to “save” women. In truth it causes them nothing but more misery.
“There are numerous causes, most of them obvious: 14 years of non-stop war waged by the U.S. and its allies in predominantly western countries”; “western” should be “ME countries”; otherwise, kudos Glenn for highlighting the typical USA xenophobic behavior.
“14 years of non-stop war waged by the U.S. and its allies in predominantly western countries”; “western” should be “ME countries”
I suggest that there was an unfortunate ambiguity here and would actually be clearer if reworded to “14 years of non-stop war waged by the U.S. and its allies most of which are predominantly western countries. . .” That’s my take on the meaning and I think it might be actually what it says but because ‘in’ here has two possible meanings, it forces the reader to take several swipes at it to make sense.
No, he meant “in predominantly Muslim countries”. Make a google search for
“greenwald waged by the U.S. and its allies in predominantly”
and you’ll see that “in predominantly Muslim countries” is his go-to phrase from way back, used to “explain” Muslim terrorist violence against Westerners.
He’s awfully predicable like that.
1936 remember?
This article makes the same mistake as the criminals here (and all too often police) — it conflates legitimate, legal (if dramatic) protest with intolerable acts of violence.
* The Quran Roast is a great idea. It lets people directly argue the issues of Islam, gives them a sense of empowerment, and — provided there is no unjustifiable interference or terrorist reaction — helps to defuse anti-Muslim fear and hatred by showing Americans that we CAN speak out for what we believe and disbelieve in matters of religion.
* Hateful letters — you’ve got to be kidding me. Where’s the beef?
* Pig’s head? Well, I am never sure whether it’s littering if you throw out something biodegradable, but probably in this case it is. It deserves the police attention given to any piece of ham found abandoned on the sidewalk.
* KKK? That should be your choice, but … do people really want to join the KKK? Why should we even let them shape our perception of these events just because they print up a couple of posters?
* White powder: trollollol, but I understand the police have to look at it.
* Armed patriots with guns: It’s their right, but watch carefully.. real carefully. If protesters can be herded into pens out of sight of the RNC “constitutionally” , I imagine an armed anti-Islam demonstration can be pushed a long long way. But try not to get carried away with that.
This still leaves you with more than enough to make your point! One or two arsons, four violent attacks, and one case of school misrule is still a very, very bad record for the week. But they stand out more when viewed as an outbreak of lawlessness than when seen simply as a component of overall anti-Muslim sentiment.
We are not going to have an America that loves Islam, but we can have an America where Muslim-bashing is as rare as gay-bashing. (Which, of course, is not rare enough, but not as common as this)
“The Quran Roast is a great idea. It lets people directly argue the issues of Islam, gives them a sense of empowerment, and — provided there is no unjustifiable interference or terrorist reaction — helps to defuse anti-Muslim fear and hatred by showing Americans that we CAN speak out for what we believe and disbelieve in matters of religion.”
If you were Benito, I’d applaud this as snark. Since you seem to be serious, would you support my pissing on the front dor of the National Cathedral as an expression of my right to protest Western religions? Cash only- no checks.
Public urination is technically a crime — this is actually a major mechanism by which the homeless are stigmatized just in case they would be considering trying to get back into the workforce. However, I certainly do not believe you should be prosecuted beyond that offense, and would support reasonable accommodations to allow you to make this protest provided the public health/lingering odor aspect is managed, such as peeing on your own Bible in the doorway and then taking it away with you. I was definitely an opponent of the ACT-UP prosecution in 1991, where they entered a cathedral to trample on a consecrated host and make a fuss. Admittedly this sort of thing shouldn’t be nearly as much of a problem for Christians to accept, since Jesus was executed for blasphemy (for saying that he could “destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days”, which is essentially what happened for his Christian believers). But most don’t see it that way, I don’t think.
Wrong again Wnt. the and this are not interchangeable, but precision is lacking in your thought processes and you go for close enough is good enough, so long as your biased opinion can be egotisically put forth.
Idiot.
John 2:19
19Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
People’s actions reflect their own inner selves.
The current hysteria against Islam is actually good for Islam and Muslims in some ways. It draws people’s attention to Islam and many find out the amount of lying and distortions that goes on, and it gives the Muslims a wonderful opportunity to turn to their higher consciousness and increase their good works, as the good deeds cancel out the bad ones.
The leaders who are engaged in the anti-Islam/Muslim propaganda are actually doing a yuuuge disservice to their bases, as they are catering to their lower self, which, by definition, reflects base qualities, such as fear, hatred, anger, lack of peace, insecurity, seeing otherness, arrogance, vengeance, etc.
The more we human beings succumb to our lower self (aka consciousness), the more we subdue our higher consciousness, which, by definition, reflects the qualities that are opposite of the qualities of the lower self.
In other words, they are killing their souls, which is by far the worst thing a human being can do to themselves or others.
If you burn a Koran because you think Korans should be banned or their owners should be attacked, that is expressing your lower self. But if you burn a Koran because you think people should be brave and not let terrorists frighten them out of criticizing Islam, or because you want to remind authorities that Americans can and do demand on retaining their freedom of speech, then you are expressing your higher self.
There are more decent, constructive , effective and courteous ways to critique Islam.
But go ahead and burn them. It’s not going to have any effect on the religion of Islam, and will give the Muslims a good opportunity to take the high road.
See The Journey of the Self, at http://www.zahrapublications.com/book-TheJourneyOfTheSelf.php#bookTitle
See also Cosmology of the Self and Witnessing Perfection at the same website.
What a disgusting, ignorant argument.
Eh? That seems counter-intuitive to me, Glenn. 14yrs of global war on Terror, in the mideast (including the still-unjustified invasion/occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq), is the leading cause of American xenophobia and hatred of Muslims?
That’s like saying Dick Cheney’s redress of Trump’s #banMuslims as unAmerican, and antithetical to all American values, is the leading progressive cause against it!
No. I’m going with door number #3: repugnant, vapid journalists for a $1,000 Glenn.
14yrs of global war on Terror, in the mideast (including the still-unjustified invasion/occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq), is the leading cause of American xenophobia and hatred of Muslims?
How about this: “The inevitable, easily-foreseeable reactions by a few Muslim extremists to 14 years of global war of terror (incidentally? a war both horrendous in nature and worse than failure in outcome) . . . constitute a leading cause of Americana xenophobia and hatred of Muslims”
Of course, I’d want to go back quite a bit further in time, were I listing the provocations and bases for Muslim attitudes toward the West and the reactions of a few: at least to WWI and Sykes-Picot.
All this babble about “it’s our fault, not theirs” or “#Jobs4Jihadis” as if this is an economic issue is completely idiotic. It takes away moral agency from the perpetrators, who are *religiously* motivated. And it also massively infantilizes the rest of the Muslim community.
No sane person could be “alienated” into going to Raqqa to behead, crucify and stone other people. Only faithful Muslims, following Quran commandments and example of their so-called prophet could.
Although, it is a bit of a mystery: why would Muslims – especially American Muslims who are, as we are told all the time, peace-loving people and who despise Islamic State and want nothing to do with it – retaliate for America’s campaign against this same Islamic State?
After all, as we are also told all the time, Islamic State kills mainly Muslims. So why would these peace-loving people hate America for stopping these Muslim-killers in their murderous tracks, and start killing innocent Americans in the streets in revenge?
In the end, it’s really simple: if there are any “American” Muslims who feel compelled to join terrorists *because America attacked terrorists*, they need to be destroyed too, not mollycoddled, psychoanalyzed or appeased. Destroyed – like mangy rabid dogs are destroyed.
@Louise
Because America attacked “terrorists” like these, Louise?
US troops massacre over 147 civilians in Farah Afghanistan
http://www.rawa.org/gallery.html
Amazing website, really brings to life how horribly Muslims treat their own co-religionists. Barbarianism on an unimaginable scale.
“Public execution of a woman by Taliban in Kabul”
“Taliban Publicly Cut Throat of a Victim”
“Scenes of amputation by criminal Taliban in Kabul”
“2000-year old Bamiyan Buddhas yesterday and today”
“Taliban use cranes to hang two men in public”
“Taliban beating women in public”
“Taliban atrocities in Herat”
Remember: “Taliban” means “students of Quran” – movement originating from Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-run religious schools.
I cannot believe some of the comments posted here but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised as this type of behavior is exactly what prompted the horrible events in this article. Anyone that believes violence begets violence has no moral character. Unfortunately may of you are learning this from our own government’s actions.
“Anyone that believes violence begets violence has no moral character.”
How very Islamophobic of you, dear. Here is Quran on that topic:
Quran (2:191-193) – “And kill them wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out. And Al-Fitnah [disbelief or unrest] is worse than killing…but if they desist, then lo! Allah is forgiving and merciful. And fight them until there is no more Fitnah [disbelief and worshipping of others along with Allah] and worship is for Allah alone. But if they cease, let there be no transgression except against Az-Zalimun (the polytheists, and wrong-doers, etc.)”
Quran (5:33) – “The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement”
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/quran/023-violence.htm
Let’s not even mention the vile life of the so-called “prophet” of Islam – who killed almost a thousand people in his time including women poets who mocked him and prisoners of war – and that is by Muslim own historical testimony in Hadith, accepted as true by all Muslims:
http://wikiislam.net/wiki/List_of_Killings_Ordered_or_Supported_by_Muhammad
https://goo.gl/YJyLYc
Refuting claims that are made by hurling isolated Quranic verses, completely out of their historical and textual settings, is by far the easiest thing to do when responding to those irresponsible commenters who simply go to an anti-Islam website and copy and paste the Quranic verses they quote without doing any analyses of them and reflecting upon them.
Usually, when I engage with these commenters, they run away as they are unable to refute my simple analyses of the verses they quote.
So it’s become a waste of my time and energy to take the verses this commenter has quoted and provide an analysis of them, that is, show what they actually mean when they’re examined in light of what else the Qur’an has stated.
Consequently, I’ll simply refer those readers who are sensible to just two works on the Qur’an:
1. Muhammad Asad’s commentary on the Qur’an, The Message of the Qur’an, and
2. The newly published, The Study Quran, at http://www.amazon.com/Study-Quran-New-Translation-Commentary/dp/0061125865/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1447317176&sr=8-1&keywords=The+study
If you study the quoted verse just in light of the first commentary, you’ll immediately understand their textual context, without going into more depth.
But if you also study them in the second commentary, and read the relevant essay in it, you’ll develop a deeper understanding of them.
The thing is, who is going to buy a Koran just to read some argument that what it says isn’t what it says? Islam has been around for more than 1000 years – isn’t there anything you can point us to that is out of copyright and freely readable online?
The Koran’s main defense, so far as I see it, is that it is a terribly vague, muddled, repetitive piece of work that doesn’t really mean much at all. But how do you reinterpret so many clearly violent things according to this and that idiom? It’s like you had to accept something was right, so you’ve reworked your whole language until it meant something else. At least, to you and a few other people – not to the ones still reading it at face value. For people facing a death penalty for apostasy that may make sense, but for the rest of us it’s a pointless exercise.
Muhammad Asad’s commentary can be downloaded from here: http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/private/cmje/religious_text/The_Message_of_The_Quran__by_Muhammad_Asad.pdf
It’s not put together very well, but it’s free.
It requires effort and patience to understand what the Quran is saying on a given issue as the verses on various subjects are scattered all over it since the Quran is more of an inspiring sermon that addresses specific human situations and conditions than a book divided into subjects.
He makes the argument at page 221 that the Quran isn’t telling believers they must cut off the hands and feet of unbelievers … that’s good … but … he still presents that as being the ‘inevitable recompense’ of the unbeliever, which is rather unpleasant but not quite monstrous … but … then by page 226 or so he is justifying the idea of cutting people’s hands off for stealing because Islam is so perfect a place to be poor, which is most certainly not a likely argument to defuse my objections.
My understanding is that this maximum penalty is an option open in the most extreme cases and only in a just society, ruled by just rulers.
Since I, and many other Muslims, are convinced that such a just society existed only for a few years in Islamic history, and does not currently exist, and its future existence is a mirage, this penalty remains dormant.
I, and our Sufi group, further believe that the Medinan portions of the Quran are heavily influenced by the Arab culture of the day and what was appropriate for that time period.
So, while we can take some universal principles from the Medinan verses, we need to take into account the collective consciousness of today’s world, its current state of affairs, international agreements and treatments, and courtesies, sensitivities and practices of the modern and post modern world.
Loosesyphyllis, yew muhst sight the write skripshur. Teh lourd knot liek it whan yew deeveyate frum hiss wird.
Iff yew ar a Hebrew Loosesyphillis, goe bye slaives, butt knot anuther Hebrew, beecuz teh lourd onlee wahnt Hebrews two haf gentle slaives don u no.
Lord have mercy, myrtle … I think you must have married a Preacher! *& right at the foot of the Cross!
xo,
bah.
“I think you must have married a Preacher”
Oy yess brahminbig, I conjumgaited inn holey matrumoney width Preechur Landover don u no. Aftur yeers off sin att teh haus of playjur width mie cuzinns eye wus saived bye hymn.
Saddlee he iss gawn sew I onn mie nees width Deecum Fabeeoh.
1. “Anyone arrogant enough to reject the verdict of the [holy man] who represents God must be put to death. Such evil must be purged.”
~Deuteronomy 17:12 NLT
2. “I will fill your mountains with the dead. Your hills, your valleys, and your streams will be filled with people slaughtered by the sword. I will make you desolate forever. Your cities will never be rebuilt. Then you will know that I am God.”
~Ezekiel 35:7-9 NLT
3. “Make ready to slaughter [the infidel’s] sons for the guilt of their fathers; Lest they rise and posses the earth, and fill the breadth of the world with tyrants.”
~Isaiah 14:21 NAB
4. “A [holy man’s] daughter who loses her honor by committing fornication and thereby dishonors her father also, shall be burned to death.”
~Leviticus 21:9 NAB
5. ” If your own full brother, or your son or daughter, or your beloved wife, or you intimate friend, entices you secretly to serve other gods, whom you and your fathers have not known, gods of any other nations, near at hand or far away, from one end of the earth to the other: do not yield to him or listen to him, nor look with pity upon him, to spare or shield him, but kill him. Your hand shall be the first raised to slay him; the rest of the people shall join in with you.”
~Deuteronomy 13:7-12 NAB
Let me know if that;s not enough to make the point for you.
1. I’d prefer to have used the King James Version (much more elegant language), but I wanted even dimwits to have a chance of understanding.
2. Edit button, please — as I (and others) used to beg The Guardian (before I was banned for life — at least the life of my IP addresses).
Moronic. I was pointing out to the dummy above that Quran explicitly “believes violence begets violence”, so it is precisely Islam itself which in her own view “has no moral character”. Of course she is unaware of that – she probably never read a verse, bless her ludicrous BDS-themed cotton socks.
The fact that Jewish Bible contains narratives of historical violence, and that Mohammed simply copied a lot of Jewish fairy-tales when he cobbled his laughable hate manual together has got exactly zero relevance to that. All it reveals is his vile character: there was a lot of other stuff available to invent a religion around, but of course not if you want your “religion” to be a foundation of your military conquest.
Why do morons like you always respond by quoting Jewish and Christian fables back at people who reveal Islam for what it is is a real mystery.
And your sort of idiotic drivel spouting ‘All religion is the problem’ is a diversion. A suicide bomber shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ does not mean we need to crack down on Danish Lutheran grannies .
. . . your sort of idiotic drivel spouting ‘All religion is the problem’ . . .”
I not only don’t “spout” that, I don’t believe it and I’ve never said it, anywhere.
Do you actually enjoy provoking anger, disgust and (yes, very likely) hatred from many of the people you so blithely insult and disparage?
All this is valid – I have made the same arguments myself many times in the past.
However, the Old Testament is not really Christianity. It was a matter of debate whether Christians should even disseminate it — and the way it was settled was basically that the Roman Emperor Constantine, having decided to stop fighting the religion outright, picked some favorites for a state-favored interpretation he funded, while continuing to execute their opponents (now as ‘heretics’ rather than Christians). And he preferred to keep the deep history on account that Romans objected to Christianity mostly as a “superstition”, i.e. what we call a New Religious Movement i.e. a cult.
Whether the Old Testament is read or not, the story of Mary Magdalene was a pretty clear commentary that Christianity strives for a better way.
You can think of it this way: Abraham wanted his seed to be as numerous as the dust of the earth. Jesus wanted people to have a place in Heaven. Those are entirely different goals, and the methods to achieve the first are different from, and by all appearances incompatible with, the methods used to achieve the second. Though Jewish law is, of course, a most mysterious thing, and they have managed to Talmudically reinterpret it in a way that I imagine Sufi Muslim must envy.
But even so, the Jews have some loftier verses and nobler prose to deal with, while the Muslims have a just awful rehash of vague threats and awfulness written by a bandit warlord. And the Jews have reinterpreted it in the contemplative peace of exiles dreaming of a home, while the Muslims have honed their interpretation in (with some exceptions) bitter sectarian warfare over just about every succession from one Caliph/Imam to the next. So while the two have the same basic problem, the degree differs considerably.
I think with Christianity it isn’t the errors that matter, but whatever is true. The world is full of falsehood and confusion, but one true good beautiful thing will stand out forever.
There are two silver linings to the current situation:
1. It gives the American, and other Western Muslims, to respond with an increase in good works. Good deeds will cancel out the bad deeds done to them.
2. The negative publicity of Islam will nevertheless draw people’s attention to it, and they’ll discover that when Islam is understood in light of its primary source, The Quran, it doesn’t condone harming the innocent non-combatants, and that it’s primary message is to connect with the Highest Consciousness (aka God), which is appealing to a lot of people.
“There is, it turns out, a serious problem of domestic terrorism in the U.S., but it’s not the kind that typically receives attention or concern.”
Mr. Greenwald, I live in a very conservative area of the U.S. & I like many here would never condone these violent attacks against Muslims. But, your statement above sounds more like some of Mr. Trump’s rhetoric. Are you just trying to increase your profit or are you running for political office?
You can accuse Mr. Greenwald of many, many things – having blood of innocents on his hands by gleefully pointing out to Muslim terrorists the ways in which they can better hide their nefarious plotting, and slandering the dead in the case of Charlie Hebdo cartoonists slaughtered by those murderous Muslim terrorist thugs he calls “a marginalized, brutalized, powerless minority” being just two – but being rational in his rhetoric isn’t among them. Try reading some of his fiercely anti-Communist and pro-American writing from a decade ago, you’ll see.
No. It doesn’t. At all.
Have you had your coffee yet this fine morning?
Religious freedom is the hearts blood of America, our Constitution, our culture and our laws. America , Muslims welcome, Jews welcome, Christians welcome, all faiths and atheists welcome, MURDERS UNWELCOME.
“Constitution”
“Muslims welcome”
Nonsense. Banning Muslim immigration would be perfectly Constitutional. Here is an anti-Trump Professor explaining why:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/10/opinion/trumps-anti-muslim-plan-is-awful-and-constitutional.html
The Opinion Pages | OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Trump’s Anti-Muslim Plan Is Awful. And Constitutional.
PETER J. SPIRO
DEC. 8, 2015
This opinion is derived from the view that the US can do anything it wants at the US border and outside of it. It may be technically legal, but it’s clearly the type of mentality that produces the results we can all see.
Cry me a river.
“14 years of non-stop war waged by the U.S. and its allies in predominantly western countries”
You wanted to say “predominantly Muslim”. Your insanely irrational anti-Western zeal obviously overheats your already addled brain to the point of malfunctioning, dear. Hug one of those mangy smelly rabid fleabags you collect to calm yourself down.
As for the incidents listed here, big deal. Simple blowback, not justifiable but completely understandable. Muslims better think before they meddle in the Western civilized lands again. They need to police their own communities or they are going to be policed for them – and it ain’t gonna be pretty.
You want to see something actually violent? Muslims were slicing open people’s stomachs before blowing them up at the Bataclan in Paris, on November 13th 2015, explicitly stating in their proclamation that they are doing it in the name of their invented god and their vile murderous so-called “prophet”.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CT2zFYdWcAA9mtB.jpg
Never forget and never forgive.
Lousie, you are truly a spewer of filthy hate. Your mommy ought to wash your mouth out with soap.
A typically worthless Interceptista response: not even an attempt to make a pertinent counter-argument.
Here’s some actual hate for you, dear:
pbs.twimg.com/media/CUNYFPQVAAAfslP.jpg
pbs.twimg.com/media/CUNX-S2VAAAhyO-.jpg
Coming soon to a neighborhood near you.
Louise, the truly sad part, that of course you will never see, is that if you had been born in the middle east, you would be a ISIS fanatic screaming “kill the infidel”. Your type of psychopathic hate always needs, and finds, an “other” to hate and blame. I hope you find some peace in your next life- this one is obviously FUBAR.
” if you had been born in the middle east, you would be a ISIS fanatic screaming “kill the infidel””
Um, you moron, the problem with Islamic State and other Muslim terrorism is its *global* character and world-wide rule as its endgame – it is precisely that people born in the *Western* civilized lands and in the rest of the world outside Middle East support and embrace this Muslim supremacist imperialist program. The foundation of this acceptance isn’t place of birth, but the brainwashing and indoctrination into Islam – and that takes place everywhere.
“drdave”? Obviously the doctor of stupid.
And – quelle surprise” you miss the point completely! The hatred of the “other” is the same process in ISIS terrorists and neo-nazis. In technical terms, its the same psychopathology, which “latches” on to a theme that makes sense to the individual in their cultural matrix. Radical Islam IS an excellent example of the process. Your kind is also.
Oh, and fuck you, too.
Yeah, but you moronically invoked “middle East” as if that was in any way pertinent, you *utterly worthless* imbecile.
So yeah. It’s either PhD in Stupid or some other worthless Social Justice Warrior non-field. “Quranic Science”?
Well, I stand corrected. Clearly, you’d be a hateful, evil, and stupid person if you were born on Mars.
By the way, my doctorate involved brain-behavior relationships on both electrophysiological and cognitive-behavioral levels. I needed to take graduate courses (as an undergrad) in electronics (we built our own physiological monitoring apparatus back then), anatomy, physiology, neurophysiology, as well as psychology. I’ve published extensively in both medical and psychiatric journals. I was the first Ph.D. in Health Psychology at Vanderbilt and they used my course of study as the template for future students. In my currrent work, I am on multiple state and national advisory commites for health and behavior policy.
So I humbly would suggest that you are, in fact, both an asshole AND an idiot.
“I honestly think he’s one of the worst profs at Vandy. He demands that you attend the class as part of his grade but reads off the powerpoints or goes on random tangents throughout class. He’s extremely opinionated & thinks highly of himself. His tests involved RANDOM vocab words that you must define word for word and his grading is biased.”
A professor who is opinionated AND expects students to attend class? The horror!
“Do not take this class. The professor reads off the powerpoint slides during the “lecture”, his tests are absolutely unreasonable, and he brings his political views into the classroom. The professor is highly opinionated, dull, and generally unhelpful.”
My college days were some time ago, but I recall finding the opinionated, politically outspoken professors the most interesting, even/especially when I disagreed with them. One of my favorite professors was an unabashed, hardcore Stalinist (this was in the Age of Reagan). He was full of shit much of the time, but I learned a lot and still recall him fondly.
Strawman much?????
FWIW, at every level of teaching and lecturing, my evaluations have ALWAYS been top of scale. Unlike some here, my idea of presenting information isn’t cutting and pasting from the internet.
BTW, stop eating the paste- it’s not good for you!
” my evaluations have ALWAYS been top of scale. ”
*chuckle*
shoot me an e-mail address and I’ll send you the data.
Data- part of a concept called “facts”. Warning- it causes exploding heads in some quarters…
Louise, what the good doctor is saying is that your attitude is no different from the jihadis you’re confusing peaceful Muslims with, and that if you had been born in the Middle East, instead of in the West, you’d probably be screaming “Kill the infidel!” instead of “Kill the heathen!” The attitude is the same, no matter the culture, in other words.
Personally, I think the world would be better if there were NO religion – no Christianity, no Judaism, no Islam. But you don’t hear me wanting these people to die, or saying it’s good that they’re dying.
Louise,
I respected your right to say what you will, but really, your just an idiot, mind fucked individual that should write movies geared for the dumb and stupid. You really have no place in the public square where people of all faiths and beliefs reside. Your attitude is troubling for it fans the flames of Terror.
LOL. Contradicting himself already within just *two lines*, must be the new Intercept record. You attained almost Quranic heights in your irrational mindlessness, well done.