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Samizdata quote of the day The fundamental problem is that the majority of otherwise peaceful and law-abiding Muslims are unwilling to acknowledge, much less to repudiate, the theological warrant for intolerance and violence embedded in their own religious texts.
– An excerpt from Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s latest book, quoted here.
Thank you Mick Hartley.
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Holy crap!(intended)
Are we to understand that someone constantly shouting “Read their freakin’ instruction manual!” to the appologists for The Religion of Peace, has actually gone to “mainstream” where big thinkers can claim profundity for it?
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is truly one of the great figures of our time in my opinion.
Many Christians have done dreadful things – utterly evil things.
However, Jesus did not.
One can, quite truthfully, say to a Christian who does evil “Jesus would weep for your victims, Jesus would hate the evil deeds you have done in his name”.
Islam has a “Mohammed problem” – for Mohammed was not like Jesus.
For example, when an old blind poet mocked Mohammed – Mohammed sent men, pretending to be friends, to the camp of the old blind poet to murder him.
And when a pregnant female poet protested at the murder of the old blind poet – men were simply sent to murder her as well.
So when a warrior of Islam strikes down a mocking film maker on the streets of Holland or Denmark, how can one say…..
“Mohammed would weep for your victim, Mohammed would hate the wicked deed you have done in his name”.
The warrior of Islam would laugh at such words.
Perry: Agreed.
Paul, anyone,
I saw the shortish UT movie a long time ago about the murder of the blind poet on Mohammed’s order, and the subsequent murder of his defender, the pregnant woman.
I am now unable to locate it. Does anyone have a link?
. . .
Also of interest: There used to be a Wikipedia article on “Muhammad and assassinations.” It has been deleted.
Link turned up as result of search, with many links to assassination accounts (possibly all within a single Wikipedia article; I haven’t checked):
http://pages.citebite.com/n2v0q5i0c7yux
The top of that page has this link to Wikipedia article “Muhammad and assassinations”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_and_assassinations#Assassination_of_Kab-al_Ashraf
which states that the entire article has been deleted. The page “explaining” the deletions is pretty obviously slanted against those who point to Islam’s failings. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Muhammad_and_assassinations
Beyond any doubt, Ali is an extraordinary person of immense courage.
The rest of us would like to think we would be as brave and unstoppable if we were faced with some similarly dangerous environment, but the blunt fact is that only a select few have this type of relentless devotion to the truth.
The quotation, while accurate, reflects only part of the overall problem.
The internal repressiveness of, and subsequent timidity by, the common follower of islam is a major factor in the manner in which so many types of fanatics can act in the name of islam with little internal opposition.
But, if the issue was only the various factions within islam fighting with each other, the rest of us might deplore the cruelty and violence without being threatened to any great extent. Unfortunately, islam has always harbored a violent hatred of anything, and anyone, that is not-islam, indeed, it divides the world into those two categories, and one of its most fundamental tenets is an eternal, violent hostility towards the other. Any other, whether religious, cultural, economic, or social, as islam claims jurisdiction over all those aspects of our lives.
If this was all there was to the situation, while it might be somewhat dangerous to the rest of the world, it would not be lethally dangerous. However, as in so many global problems, there are some other currents in the affairs of the world that have combined to turn a creek into a raging flood.
The development of major oil resources in several Islamic territories by western commercial concerns provided wealth and international leverage that these areas and peoples would never have acquired otherwise. As a collateral consequence, western cultural influences became more intrusive in Islamic areas that would have been total backwaters without the need for outside technicians to develop these resources, and then, inevitably, the more fanatical religious teachers and political leaders used the alleged threat of this western intrusiveness to rally the faithful to oppose such immoral contamination of Islamic purity.
In a convergence of hostility, the progressive faction in the west lost its patron when the soviet empire collapsed, and looked for a new partner in its ongoing war against liberal, capitalist western society. The left, which had always been a fifth column in western society, found another doctrine which had an endless reservoir of hatred for Christianity, capitalism, liberal democratic principles, and all the non-regimented aspects of an open society.
It was not surprising, then, that these two bundles of hatred adopted each other as siblings in their campaign to destroy the west, and replace it with something very different, even if their putative definitions of that “new society” were themselves at odds.
And so, here we are, in the first decades of the 21st century, recapitulating the chaotic antagonisms of the 20th, only with some new players, even if they’re spouting the same tired lines of Marxist/collectivist drivel that sent that sad century into a death march unprecedented in the long, painful history of mankind.
The left needed someone with money, and a fanatical devotion to the destruction of the west equal to their own. Islam needed some termites to weaken the foundations of western social resolve, and willingly engage in cultural suicide, in order to overcome the natural weaknesses of islam, and negate the natural strengths of the west.
Each believes that its side can outwit, and outmuscle, the other when the common purpose has been achieved, and neither minds the fact that its goals can only be reached by marching down a highway of corpses stretching around the globe.
There is much talk, and rightfully so, of the need for a reformation from within islam to replace fanaticism with true spirituality, and hatred of all others with a moderate toleration of non-Islamic beliefs.
But there is a flip-side to that coin—and it is the desperate need for a reformation of western society to replace its suicidal fascination with collectivism with a renewed appreciation for, and dedication to, the principles of the rights of man that provided the foundation and catalyst for all its wealth and power.
The day will come, as it always does, when all these currents of our global history come together to form a whirlpool capable of drowning all who do not have a suitable intellectual, economic, and military craft capable of withstanding the torrent.
When we have cleaned our own house, then, maybe, we can repair the rest of the damage. We must remove the beam from our own eye…
The radical Muslim wants to cut your head off.
The moderate Muslim wants the radical Muslim to cut your head off.
Julie
You might check this List of Killings
Also the Dead Poet Society
Cheers
Thanks, J.M., very interesting sites of which I was unaware. I will look at them carefully when I get a chance.
In particular, though, I’m looking for the short movie that was up on, I think, UT, some years ago. It was specifically a screenplay presumably telling of a real incident, as opposed to being a documentary.
It’s unlikely, but it may be that one of the names mentioned in your sources are in the video description, so of course I’ll search on those.
I have heard many people say that what Islam needs is a version of the Reformation. This isn’t right, as what the Christian Reformation was, was allegedly a return to the fundamentals of Christianity and discarding all the stuff that had built up in the millennium and a half since Jesus’s death. Islam has already had its Reformation; its Sunni Luther was Abd al-Wahhab and its Shia Calvin was Ruhollah Khomeini. Both instigated radical changes from how their faith was before, just as Luther and Calvin did. And both discarded centuries of tradition and understanding, just as Luther and Calvin did.
No. What Islam really needs is a Counter-Reformation. An Islamic Ignatius Loyola; Muslim Jesuits, who can make the intellectual and scriptural case for the traditional Islam that had the Copts and the Yazidis and the Zoroastrians and even the Mizrahim living among them for centuries. The Islam that allows a Bosniak to split a bottle of slivovitza with you and still go with a clear conscience to Friday prayers at the mosque. The Islam, which in other words has been the Islam we’ve known for a millennium and a half. And the Islam that I’ve seen in the 50 or so years since there’s been a significant Muslim presence in my home city of Bradford.
Islam isn’t going to go away. What we need to do is support the liberal traditionalist tendency within the ulema; help them get their message out and back them up with both money and other means of support. We know that works, as the salafi wouldn’t have got anywhere near the traction they have without Saudi gold behind them.
As much as I admire Ali and the weight of her analysis, I don’t think a counter-reformation will be that successful. One version has already tried and it is struggling, being one of the most persecuted.
A slight correction. Islam isn’t going away so long as the western nations continue to be spineless and complicit in their own colonisation. With a different attitude, Islam could “go away” within a fairly short space of time, in much the same way as the Nazi’s did.
Runcie Balspune (great handle by the way) said…
Yes, it’s not doing too well. Imagine how well the Ahmadiyyahas would do if they had the kind of money and soft power behind them that the Wahhabis have got from the House of Saud. Much, much better I think. As well as the Society of Jesus did with the power and money of Rome behind them did…
Mr Black said…
A final solution to the Islamic question? I have no time for those who think that we can make the world a better place by exterminating a sixth of its population. Needless to say, if “the West” should go that way, my hand would be against it.
“A final solution to the Islamic question? I have no time for those who think that we can make the world a better place by exterminating a sixth of its population. Needless to say, if “the West” should go that way, my hand would be against it.” – Completely agree.
However, we should not allow any more Muslim immigration. The “revelations” (or confirmation of what most of us thought) that the parent of one of the ISIS girls was a radical, and totally prepared to lie his ass off in a Select committee (Taqiyya in full effect) show that we have significant issues at home, and simply do not need to make them any worse.
Mr Black —
Pardon me, but I believe we still have Nazis. They are hardly at the top of the heap, but the left-collectivists warn of their danger. I suspect the left may be right. (This depends, of course, on your definition of “Nazi”. Quite a few people claim the name, or many of the traits. Some of them even seem to be the real thing.)
I don’t think Mr Black was arguing for an Islamic holocaust (I certainly hope not) but rather suggesting that if the ideology of so-called radical Islam were so strongly opposed, and the countries promulgating it by soft power or otherwise invaded and occupied until such time they were thoroughly decontaminated of Wahhabist sympathies, the threat would have been successfully neutered in much the same way as the Nazis are not a present threat, despite a small minority of Nazi sympathizers still existing.
I don’t particularly agree with that, but certainly the present mode of dealing with the threat posed by Islam (pretending the threat doesn’t exist) is not working.
@BigWashuu, our posts crossed – like you I agree that there are definitely still people who could legitimately be described as Nazis. However they are not particularly influential, nor likely to become so.
Julie near Chicago : http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4702/islam-killing-innocents says Mo ordered 43 assassinations in addition to the reprisals against three Jewish tribes including the slaughter of all men and boys and the enslavement of woman and children of the Banu Qurayza. I am sure Robert Spencer at jihadwatch has set out these murders with references to the Koran and Sura somewhere.
Judging from past comments, yes he probably is.
Johnnydub said:
Those who think people seeking to join Daesh would employ Taqiyya are just showing their general ignorance of Islam. Taqiyya is a Shi’a doctrine, historically used by them to hide their beliefs when amongst Sunnis who would persecute them if they were identified. Sunni Islam does have the concept of kitman. This generally involves deflection rather than outright lying, and is generally deprecated now by the Sunni ulema. No Sunni terrorist ever concealed the fact that they were fundamentalist Sunni Muslims. Daesh won’t ever hide.
Lying is as old as warfare. Alawites have, I understand, ‘taqiyya’ too, in order to survive. Some Jews in Portugal were ‘hidden’ for centuries, apparently one village, Belmonte, came out as late as 1917 (not the best of timing it should be noted).
Just because someone who is Muslim lies does not mean all Muslims lie, or that the individual in question always lies. Methodological individualism applies as much to the members of the Khmer Rouge, as to ISIS, the Gestapo, the guards of Belsen, the Syrian Army or the US Army.
Sometimes intolerance is useful.
LJH, thanks for the link. Yes, it’s quite possible that Mr. Spencer makes reference to the movie somewhere. Probably Pamela Geller does too, and maybe Glenn Beck even. And Front Page Mag. The search continues…sigh.
Mr Ed said;
The Alawites are a sect of Twelver Shi’a, so of course they have Taqiyya. For the Jews of Belmonte, as Ahl al-Kitāb they had no reason to hide under Islam Classic. A reminder that Islam has historically a far better record in its treatment of Jews than does Christianity. That that has changed in recent times is greatly to the shame of Islam as it now is.
I haven’t seen any of his past comments but if that is what he was hinting at I am deeply disturbed.
Edward @ March 28, 2015 at 9:34 am:
I don’t think either of those hats fit. Abd al-Wahhab is far more like Calvin then Luther – preaching an extremely “purified” Islam. (And having literal iconoclasm as a principle.) Khomeini sort of fits Luther. Shia Islam resembles Catholicism with its formalized hierarchy, pilgrimages and saints, and Khomeini, like Luther, revised that structure where Calvin and al-Wahhab would abolish it.
Also: It is certainly true that the oil jackpot in the pockets of Saudi Arabia has been a colossal boost to Wahhabi/Salafi Islam, but the Moslem Brotherhood predated the oil boom by decades. Sayyid Qutb was executed in 1966.
As regards the SQotD: the world is faced with a problem we thought had been resolved three hundred years ago. The Christian world agreed to separate religious beliefs from political authority. Religious bodies would not seek political authority; political authorities would not touch religion. By 1800, Jefferson could write that his neighbor’s religion “neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
And we came to hate (justifiably) any attempt to dictate religious belief in the manner of the Middle Ages, even to the point of tolerating demented cults and criminal rackets under the guise of religion. Whatever harm they did was considered trivial compared to the danger to freedom of thought that might result from suppressing them.
But now we are faced with genuine religious belief that is objectively destructive and dangerous on a large scale. To suppress it will require breaking that three-century truce – if not by the First World, then by other Moslems. (It should be noted that many extremist Moslems have found asylum in Western countries on the grounds that they were persecuted in Moslem countries – and these grounds were often true.)
We have reluctantly accepted the idea that state power can be properly used to transmit good political doctrines and to suppress bad doctrines. (I.e., denazification after WW II.) But the exercise of state power over religious belief has been taboo.
To deal with jihadist Islam may require a New Inquisition. Either a Moslem Inquisition, which silences jihadist clerics and argues their followers out of jihadism; or an anti-Moslem Inquisition, which suppresses all Moslem clerics and converts all Moslems to something else.
The former – well, what Moslems are going to do it? The latter – who would do it at all?
But eventually this nettle may have to be grasped.
My past comments, Simon, have been to the effect that killing them until they give up is a proven military strategy, yet the “sensible” people in the debate always pretend as if that option doesn’t exist. If we could do that by killing 10 of them, that would be great. But it will probably have to be closer to 10 million of them. And I’m fine with that. That’s what it took to defeat the Nazi’s and it was worth the price, both to us AND the Germans who survived not to mention all those who were spared from Nazi death camps in the future.
If numbers like that are shocking to you, it’s because you are not familiar with warfare, history, or in fact anything relevant to the discussion of how to deal with a hostile invading culture. If we’ve truly reached a point where killing the enemy until they give up is seen as beyond the pale, then our western culture is already dead. We’re just waiting for the executioner to do his work, whether it is islamists now or whatever comes after.
I’d like to think that there still exists some self-preservation instinct somewhere in us but there certainly are a lot in the west who advocate for cultural suicide, just slower.
Actually, I’d really like to emphasize the human cost of defeating nation states. We’ve become so used to clean wars I think a lot of folks have forgotten what a real one looks like.
Let’s turn back the clock to 1939 and you are told that defeating the Nazi’s will mean killing 10 million Germans, most of whom are foot soldiers and civilians, with only a fraction being actual Nazi fanatics. But if we kill them, Nazism is destroyed. If at that point, you say 10 million deaths is too much of a price, then the Nazi’s win by default.
So how many of you, really, are prepared so say that the Nazi’s have to win because you’re too squeamish about the numbers? Hands up what side you’re on, if you think my position is too extreme. Are 10 million deaths worth the victory, or do Nazi’s win?
Seeing the list of people Mohammed had whacked, he seems more like a mob boss than a religious leader. If you offended him, he did not turn the other cheek, he had you clipped. How to deal with a religion with the ethos of the Gambino crime family? Most Muslims might be like the little people who show respect to the capo, the ambitious ones become made men. Outside of a few loony cults, has there ever been a major religion with this sort of outlook?
Actually it is you who is not familiar with warfare or history. You are probably one of those people who thinks the strategic air war and ‘terror bombing’ in WW2 actually worked prior to the narrowly targeted ‘Oil Plan’, rather than being a colossal waste of resources.
This is where I conclude that no matter how many history books you might have read, you understand very little and also confuse correlation with causation. The total number of Germans killed was actually not that important: it was achieving military objectives such as occupying territory and depriving Nazi Germany of the means to fight that mattered. Killing five million more random Germans would have been less useful than depriving them of Ploesti. If all that mattered was killing people, why bother advancing at all? Killing people is a by product of achieving military objectives.
If you want to fight a kill ’em all mega-death strategy against 24% of the world’s population, frankly I think you are delusional if you imagine that can work.
Of course it is – I doubt anyone here is arguing otherwise, even including Mr Black (who, I’m sure, will correct me if necessary). Question is, how much of such a byproduct is acceptable, and can there be a point where the size of that byproduct is impossible to predict with any degree of certainty?
“If you want to fight a kill ‘em all mega-death strategy against 24% of the world’s population, frankly I think you are delusional if you imagine that can work.
Agreed, but you have to admit that it would go a long way toward satisfying the desires of the radical environmentalists who think that the human population of the planet is far too large!
Oh come on. This discussion seems to be deteriorating into an opinion-bashing contest. We would be able to do better than this.
The opening post is a quote that says:
There are two points I would make about this:
Firstly, I would suggest that this looks like it is merely an opinion and an unprovable statement.
(a) There is no validation of the statement that it is indeed THE fundamental problem.
(b) There is no validation of the statement that it is indeed ANY fundamental problem.
(c) So it may or may not be A fundamental problem, and, if it is, then it is not necessarily the only one or the main one.
In fact, we already know that the Islamic faith has no problem whatsoever, and nor could it ever have a problem. Muslims know that it is perfect, self-contained, and self-substantiating, since it is based on the Koran, which Muslims believe to be the actual, absolute and infallible word of Allah. So, it can only be perfect.
Secondly, I would suggest that the phrase “…are unwilling to acknowledge…” is a classic Western blind-spot that flies in the face of reason. If you are a Muslim, there is no “unwilling” about it. Islam means “submit” to the will of Allah. This categorically negates freedom of will, thought or speech.
If:
(i) Mohammed (pbuh) is the perfect model for Man (and he is, to all Muslims), then whatever he did was a perfect example of behaviour to us all.
(ii) the Koran is the actual, absolute and infallible word of Allah (and it is, to all Muslims), then whatever it advocates Muslims to do – e.g., including waging jihad against Dar al-harb (the unbelievers) – is a commandment and a duty from Allah, and is infallible.
For a Muslim to argue against either (i) or (ii) would be a sin of heresy/blasphemy/apostasy, which, as such, would be properly punishable by death. Thus, no self-respecting Muslim who wishes to have a long and trouble-free life and end up in Paradise is likely to ever “repudiate” anything in the Koran or Shariah law – unless it is Taqiyya (which is permitted/recommended in Islam), of course.
So the quote in the opening post is arguably nonsense, but it is coming from an apostate, so what else could one expect?
All very true, but only of perfect Muslims. Most people, and this includes most Muslims, are very imperfect adherents of their religions: Jews who eat bacon, Catholics who haven’t been to confession since 1968… so why not Muslims who can’t be arsed over jihad, and try to ignore the whole thing?
@PersonFromPorlock: Yes, absolutely. I feel sure they do simply try to ignore it, but the thing they cannot openly do is “…acknowledge, much less to repudiate, the theological warrant for intolerance and violence embedded in their own religious texts” (QED).
So it’s the three wise monkeys thing. Fear. Self-censorship.
On the religio-political ideology: The Victorian Prime Minister William Gladstone is recorded as once brandishing the Koran in the House of Commons, announcing with great authority and prescience “so long as there is this book, there will be no peace in the world”. On another occasion, Mr Gladstone is recorded as referring to the Koran as “this accursed book”. Goodness knows why he would have said these things.
/sarc off.
Still, consider the Mormons, who run a nice line of having a new message from God every time one of their tenets runs afoul of the US government. Surely Western Muslims could ‘discover’ a new interpretation of the Koran that ruled out violent jihad if they wanted to. Inconsistency – even with Holy writ – is not unknown in religious matters.
Ali’s point is that ‘moderate’ Muslims are (so far) unwilling to do this.
Hadiths might be useful here. These are non-koranic stories about Mo, and they seem to multiply. If there is not a Hadith about being peaceful, anyone could make one up, and claim it is a hadith.
@PersonFromPorlock:
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Very amusing. Did you intend that to be a provocative statement, or was it intended seriously because you really have not studied the Koran and thus don’t know any better? If you have not studied the Koran, then I would recommend that you do so. There is much potential wisdom to be gained from reading it, regardless of what your current perceptions might be of it in terms of (say) a possibly Western-centric and/or Judeo-Christian paradigm held in the mind of a person in beautiful Porlock.
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A study of the Koran would show that the Mormons and Islam seemingly operate within completely different theological universes, thus it would seem to be irrelevant to compare them – a red herring.
Therefore, it would be incorrect to make a case based on such a comparison. In making such an ignorant comparison – as you do – you are (probably unwittingly) being incredibly offensive and disrespectful to Muslims and Islam. Mormons are Dar al-harb.
There is nothing imperfect in the Koran that needs “adjusting” or revision so as to conform to Dar al-harb – for example (say), to some weak/corrupt modern-day Western paradigm. It would be blasphemous to even suggest it. On the contrary, Islam is committed by Allah’s word to converting those in Dar al-harb to Dar al-Islam (except for the Jews), and that way lies peace in the Caliphate. This is why Islam is described as “The Religion of Peace”™. All Muslims desire this peace.
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I carefully reread the opening quote, and there is apparently nothing in it to indicate that Ali was making any kind of a point about “moderate Muslims”. You should not put undefined labels or other words into her mouth. Like Spencer (referred to in this thread), she is simply an apostate known for spewing irrational gibberish and blasphemy about Islam. Neither of them can be regarded as speaking for or on behalf of Islam.
Ali is talking nonsense, as I say:
It is simply not permitted in Islam to insult, disobey or adjust the perfect and infallible word of Allah.
The first step forward to lasting peace could arguably be for the West to respect and embrace Islam, and Islam would embrace them. As POTUS Obama put it in his speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York in Sept. 2012:
Well, if Slartibartfarst’s description is correct, and there really is no possibility of Islam somehow “moderating” itself so its adherents can live in harmony with non-Muslims, then I fear Mr Black’s solution is the only one remaining. Their choice, not mine.
And as to the comparison to Mormonism (or any other religion) being “incredibly offensive and disrespectful to Muslims and Islam”, I certainly hope so. Islam deserves no “respect”, and certainly receives none from me. It is a cancer on the human species.
@Laird: Yes, well, depressingly that seemed to have been pretty much the sort of view/conclusion that was arrived at in this forum quite some time ago when this subject was discussed.
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I don’t subscribe to it though. I actually reckon that Gladstone probably had it right – i.e., it is “this accursed book” (as he called it) that is the problem. It’s not the people (the Muslims). It’s the religio-political ideology that the Koran promulgates and sets the paradigms in concrete in the minds of the susceptible.
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It makes life much easier. It takes away the need for and the authority for thinking independently and exercising free will, and lays that responsibility at the feet of Allah. All the believer has to do is follow the rules set out in the book, and you are guaranteed your rightful place in Paradise (well, if you are a bloke, anyway, though it’s not quite so certain for women as they are pretty much relegated to the position of chattels in this life and the hereafter – e.g., the 72 virgins for each martyr).
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The Koran would seem to be an excellent textbook for creating and promulgating a dichotomy within people’s minds – “them versus us” (Dar al-harb v. Dar al-Islam) – and includes detailed strategies for making “religious” warfare (jihad or “holy war”) to force Islam to a supreme/dominant position in whatever society it finds itself. It even tells believers how to kill unbelievers (e.g., “strike them on the neck”) and the perfect behavioural example is Mohammed (pbuh) who is apparently recorded as having beheaded upwards of 500 people. It’s a kind of cuckoo religio-political ideology – there can be only one. Just as the cuckoo probably does not know why it must push everything else out of its nest, the Muslims don’t know why Islam must be supreme and why they must behead people except that there are “many sura” (to quote the Woolwich beheader) that tell them that it must be so and what is to be done about furthering that strategy.
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When one reads discussion threads like this, it can be depressing to see how little people seem to really know/understand about Islam. This is mostly, I suspect, because they have not got the intellectual curiosity necessary to motivate them to read and inwardly digest the book. Yet they should read it, if only because they would then understand what the textbook is that is being daily used to fill the heads of innocent and gullible children in so-called “Islamic faith schools” in Western and other societies, under the guise of “education”. It’s hate-filled indoctrination.
It might be better to set (say) Scientology as the sole official religion in faith schools, because that at least does not (so I gather) prescribe killing masses of unbelievers and committing genocide on the Jews.
That “accursed book” represents a potential existential threat to all unbelievers, and also to some/many believers who don’t quite believe the right way.
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You say that Islam
I don’t think that calling it names is likely to be particularly constructive, though Attaturk did call it that – mind you, he then did something about it, but after a longish remission it is back in Turkey, which now seems to have an elected non-secular Islamic party in power in their parliament, and it is passing (or has passed) laws biased towards Islamicism and Shari’ah (law) – e.g., the wearing of the veil (hajib) or a burkah, both of which had been banned by Attaturk.
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By the way, I like your avatar.
How many people have read Moore’s ‘Utopia’?
I dislike all that compulsory communal living, but I do like his attitude to war-mongers; kill the leaders. Offer a bounty on the Fuhrers head, or hire mercenaries to just kill one man. If war-mongery persists, then kill the new leader, until the next leader learns the right lesson, or the political structure collapses with in-fighting over the leadership. Better that one man dies, the one advocating war, than armies clash.
A shame all our ‘Defence’ Departments don’t practice it.
Perry, I’m well aware of the history of strategic bombing and what it achieved, or failed to. While it did not win the war on its own, it demonstrated the will and power of the allies to rain utter devastation onto German and Japan. A man bombed once may think of revenge, a man bombed 100 times thinks only of hiding in a deep, deep hole. They think we are the weak horse, and they are right. We avoid killing them at every opportunity and they recognize that for the moral weakness it is. We need to change the calculus.
The problem with traditional ideas of warfare is that we are not facing an enemy with traditional logistics and infrastructure. One man with an internet connection and access to ANY deadly weapon is enough to make him a “soldier” of islam. We cannot capture military objectives as there are none. We cannot cut off his supplies, as he needs none. We cannot eliminate his command structure, as there isn’t one. All we can do is kill him.
Militant islam needs to be terrified into submission. It is a war of minds and they see themselves as dominant and us as submissive. Everything supports their view. We do not change that by drone strikes and special forces raids. We change it by slaughtering them until they give up.
But by all means, list for me the military objectives which we should capture and that you feel would end islams war against the west.
Nick, I have read Utopia, and the section about the conduct of war is that only part I like. Otherwise, it seems a hideous place to live. I suspect that the only reason modern nations don’t follow that approach is that our leaders fear that it would be directed at them as well. To me that seems to be a feature, not a bug, but I suppose others might feel differently.
Slarti, I don’t see how you can separate “that accursed book” from the people implementing it. People bear responsibility for their own actions; they choose to believe in it, to adopt its tenets, to act on its commands, and to pass it on to their children. They do not have to do any of those things, so when they do they must suffer the consequences. Laying the blame for their horrendous deeds on some inanimate object seems to be the ultimate in facile rationalization. But if you do find a way to extirpate that accursed book without adversely affecting the people who believe in it please be sure to enlighten the rest of us.
Quoth Slartibartfast:
Maybe, but not all opinions are created equal. Some are stupid, some are evil, and some are wrong.
Mr. Black seems to be grasping for the trifecta.
That was part of Soviet doctrine, to send Spetznaz forces to kill Western leaders, disorientate the country, and invade, retaining more to plunder and more slaves for the GULAG. All it meant was a slower death for the good people of this world.
It demonstrated the will and power of the allies to do something that was a vast waste of resources until the more narrowly targeted Oil Plan, as before then, it was essentially nothing more than the 1940’s version of a giant vuvuzela.
Actually the evidence suggests a man bombed 100 times has probably figured out after the 10th time that this was why his government was dispersing industrial production and had come up with an air attack warning system.
The fight against Islam needs to be highly targeting and the strategic element needs to be an ideological fight. This later and far more important thrust is something the multiculti PC crowd has very effectively prevented from happening. Western Civilisations problems are only military in a very small way.
lost-lost cousin, I’m talking about winning a war. You’re engaged in moral preening, demonstrating you have the “right” views on such things. They’ll cut your head off just the same as mine though. The only difference is I’ll die fighting, and you’ll die begging.
And Perry, you seem to have missed my simple request, namely that you provide a list of these war winning targets you think we need to hit or capture or destroy. It’s all good and well to say hit them where it hurts them, but it’s just pointless noise until you name the people and places you think we need to kill.
I’ll also note, not a single one of my critics bothered to provide a reply as to whether 10 million German lives was worth the cost of beating their Nazi rulers. I’ll interpret this in the obvious way, that everyone sort of agrees it was, but admitting it in this context places you in a tough position for saying 10 million muslim lives is too many for our victory.
So while my moral betters here are all for victory, none of them are for killing the enemy. We’re to have our hands tied by having to “win” in an unspecified but non-killing manner, which allows certain people to keep their moral hands clean. Such a position is not worthy of scorn, it’s just so ridiculous.
And another thought has occurred to me. Who exactly decided that the fight against islam “needs” to be strictly targeted? Where is the evidence for this? In what war did hitting a handful of strategic nodes end in complete surrender of the enemy AND all their strategic and cultural aims?
Apparently strategic bombing is useless, but hitting a tiny fraction of those targets is war winning? Utter nonsense.
Mr. Black, Islamists must believe that Allah will direct the course of all wars (it’s in the Koran, therefore such belief is compulsory), so if we can bomb the supposed Caliph into the next world, they would have to accept that as God not being happy with him, and his cause. In this case, bombing might end the war. (And what would the Nazies have done if Hitler had been killed in a bombing raid? I think they would have collapsed with infighting, thus shortening the war.)
Well thank you for that speculation but I was looking more for prior examples of war winning strategies, not wishful thinking.
Yes of course, killing any number was worth it, but this is where you seem to confuse causation and correlation: killing 10 million random Germans (and by carpet bombing, or indeed nuking cities, you kill random people) would not win WW2. Or indeed WW1. Depriving Germany (and Japan) of oil won WW2 and killing lots of soldiers and finally breaking them militarily won WW1.
Even horrendous casualties do not rob entire societies of the will to fight, and thus simply killing people in undifferentiated droves does not win wars. That is my objection to your thesis. Your approach is that of Douhet and Harris and it.did.not.work. Attacking command and control works. Attacking POL production and distribution works. Supply transportation interdiction works. Kill ’em all, let God sort ’em out, does not work and is a waste of time and money.
@Laird:
If you are a Muslim then it is presumably either:
(a) that you were born into it and are thus de facto a part of the hive (and you cannot escape because that is apostasy and that way tends to lead to death);
OR:
(b) you marry a Muslim (and may have to thus become a Muslim) or chose to become a Muslim (and you cannot escape because that is apostasy and that way tends to lead to death).
.
Membership of Islam is not like joining a club or somehow being optional, it is Islam (submission to Allah’s will), and it’s a one-way thing except for the highly courageous (e.g., Hirsi Ali).
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I do not know of or advocate any way that we might be able to “…extirpate that accursed book without adversely affecting the people who believe in it…”.
What I was saying was that the book (i.e., the incredibly strong and self-substantiating religio-political ideology that it contains, supported by Shariah law) is the problem. That is the causal problem. The Muslims (i.e., any who are forced/indoctrinated to believe and/or actually do believe any of the nonsense in the Koran) are symptomatic (a result) of the problem. There are other symptomatic outcomes (e.g., ceaseless war), all of which generally could seem to pose an existential threat to all non-Muslims (Dar al-harb.
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Thus, killing the Muslims is addressing the symptoms and not the causal problem.
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I consider that it is probable that the causal problem cannot be solved, and that Gladstone was perceptive and prescient in his statement that “so long as there is this book, there will be no peace in the world”. Indeed this was a conclusion that was pretty much arrived at in a discussion in this forum a couple of years ago, when I essentially challenged the Samizdats to figure out how to address the issue of Islam’s blind compulsory hegemony/domination. At that time, no-one else could seem to see past “killing them”, which seems to be where we are at in this thread at this point.
Arguably, there will never be peace in the world whilst mankind exists either, so we’ve got that little problem to face up to as well.
You’re talking about fighting a conventional army. The islamists do have conventional forces of a sort but their real threat and power is their culture, it infects and destroys everything it touches. Their culture creates murderers all around the world that spring up to kill us by surprise. You cannot defeat that threat without crushing the militancy of their culture and destroying its roots.
In that context the military aims of a convention war are ludicrous.
Also, where is this list of war winning targets?
Perry, what worries me about the sort of anti-war libertarian thinking that some people adhere to out of a false sense of moral superiority is that it is based on a very shaky and almost certainly false premise, one that may well lead to our defeat. Namely that there must be a way to win a war without killing the enemy.
When I read opinions to the effect that of course we need to win, however we shouldn’t kill civilians, or cause any sort of terror, or target the enemy population in our own countries etc etc then we’re not talking about winning a war anymore, we’re talking about maintaining moral purity, even at the cost of our lives and our countries. In war there is only one principle: to win.
How you win is irrelevant. I’d rather the armies of the west slaughter every living muslim than they win and impose an ISIS-like state over us. I wouldn’t like to give that order nor would I like to see it carried out, but it is the lesser of two evils. Letting them win because we won’t fight back effectively isn’t moral, it’s suicide.
Unless a person is prepared to say victory at any cost (to the enemy) then they’re not really talking about winning, they’re still posturing for the crowd.