After all the evil and lethal crap that Islam oozes and spews -- not merely over the centuries, decades, years and months -- but just in any given past week, I continue to see Jihad Watchers (or we may call them "AIMers" (for those within the blurry lines of the Anti-Islam Movement) or "Counterjihadists" or "Anti-Shariaians") pull their punches with regard to what we should do about the problem.
I invite the reader to merely scan the headlines on Jihad Watch for this week. Then perform the unremarkably reasonable operation of thought that realizes this is but a tip of the horrible iceberg.
Ensconced in a ledge at the crest of this week's peak of that mountain -- or rather volcano -- of the evil lava of data about Islam we may call Mt. Jihad Watch, one such Jihad Watcher ("Anushirvan") has this to say about the fact that the T.S.A. is employing hijabbed staff:
I would even go as far as stating that some people, whose roots can be found in certain countries, just may have to be totally exempted from being allowed to work in any airport security function or even from any function within a Western airport, period. Which in my mind would have absolutely nothing to do with excluding ethnicities, but everything with common sense that puts public security first.
Apparently, "Anushirvan" thinks he's advocating a tough no-nonsense policy, when he dials down what we can do in the face of dangerous Muslims, and arrives at an irrational delimitation far short of the only prescription that makes sense:
All Muslims must be excluded from all venues and institutions where the slightest inkling of a possibility for a terror attack is possible.
This prescription, of course, would be the last, and ridiculously encumbered, stand before the most rational policy of all: total deportation.
"Anushirvan" and all the others in the A.I.M. who similarly advocate half-assed piecemeal measures with an anxious eye out to avoid offending PC MC, should know better.
A second example of a person with one foot in the A.I.M. (since it's not clear he is actually against Islam per se) is another frequent and long-time commenter on Jihad Watch, "Kinana of Khaybar".
A few weeks ago, he wrote this in a comments thread at Jihad Watch:
My view is that the harsh elements of sharia should be banned (e.g., the laws against and penalties for apostasy, blasphemy, adultery, homosexuality, etc.) and that those who try to implement such harsh and unjust aspects of sharia should be legally prosecuted and punished. I oppose Rojas' proposals viz Muslims who are following the laws of the land (in this case the U.S.) and are simply following and practicing Islam as a personal faith like Jews, Christians, and others.
Even more disquieting is the fact that the person he wrote this to, Barry Sommers -- another ostensibly anti-Islam individual, a teacher who attempted to teach a class about Islam in a community-college in Oregon which was dropped by the college because they caved to C.A.I.R. allegations about him -- replied in that same thread to "Kinana of Khaybar" that he essentially agrees with his anxious concern to safeguard Muslim rights.
Conclusion:
Why are so many within the ragged boundaries of the A.I.M. asymptotic? That question seems to be a mirror-image of the why of PC MC itself. It's even more aggravating, since Jihad Watchers have even less of an excuse than do PC MCs. One can only conclude that the A.I.M. is still struggling, more or less consciously and coherently, with the very process of trying to reconfigure the paradigm shift that brought PC MC itself into dominance. Part of that continued intellectual (and emotional) struggle reflects the retention, to one degree or another, of the PC MC disease.
7 comments:
'Apparently, "Anushirvan" thinks he's advocating a tough no-nonsense policy, when he dials down what we can do in the face of dangerous Muslims, and arrives at an irrational delimitation far short of the only prescription that makes sense:
All Muslims must be excluded from all venues and institutions where the slightest inkling of a possibility for a terror attack is possible.'
I can't help but notice how you have deliberately distorted the truth in order to prove some point that actually doesn't hold any water to start with. The last part of your 'conclusion' claims to be quoting me directly, but as a matter of fact, I did not state this anywhere ! The first quote you mentioned on the other hand is indeed my own.
I rather think you have taken what I have said out of context. I was elaborating on Robert's idea of the current schism within Islam between those Islamist subgroups that want to claim moral supremacy within global Islam by discrediting each others 'moral' viewpoints in justifying their own actions, while at the same time, the goals they want to achieve are actually the same. Which is something you don't seem to be aware of.
In any case, the latter concept of taqqiyya I have been referring to is an aggravating factor in the way Westerners will gradually perceive people of Middle Eastern and East Asian origin. Whereas the traditionalist Islamists are very visible in our society today, given the fact that Muslim dress codes are very much out in the open, as the TSA example demonstrates, the Takfir wal Hijra movement draws exclusively on the taqqiya concept, which makes them as good as invisible. However, whereas the first example will gradually draw the attention of ALL of the general public's awareness and will lead to a general feeling of unease sooner or later, the latter will only be discernible to those that have the explicit knowledge of what taqqiyya means and how takfiri groups apply it in practice. The general public will remain unaware of it, unless it will be educated to the extent that it will become general knowledge to our society and people will be explicitly aware of the concept and what consequences it holds for the future. In any case, it will be quite obvious that the broader layers of society are already uneasy with regards to the permeating favorable view of traditionalist dress codes in our societies (thanks to PC/MC) and the consequences this will hold, bearing public safety issues in mind. Which means, contrary to the view of PC/MC facilitator views, the negative perception of minorities will not fizzle out, it will only aggravate. And this is only down to common sense of the common people.
If people in general will become aware of the latter part, the taqqiyya strategy, it will become even more obvious that negative perceptions of some minorities will worsen. The consequences are manifold.
1) there may come a time when the general public might rally behind the idea that ANY member of such a minority has to be scrutinized by security agencies as soon as such a person enters a country.
2) such a view will undoubtedly lead to discrimination of all of these minorities and people will not have the common sense to start differentiating between Muslims and let's say Arab Christians, Indian Hindus, Pakistani Sikhs or Sri Lankan Bhuddists, and the like.
Anushirvan,
I can't help but notice how you have deliberately distorted the truth in order to prove some point that actually doesn't hold any water to start with. The last part of your 'conclusion' claims to be quoting me directly, but as a matter of fact, I did not state this anywhere !
Your misapprehension of my meaning is understandable, since my locution (I now notice) admits of a semantic ambiguity, even if that ambiguity is obviously not the correct reading.
When I wrote that your articulation -- "arrives at an irrational delimitation far short of the only prescription that makes sense: "
-- there are two distinct things I am referring to:
1) your articulation
2) the only prescription that makes sense.
What follows my colon in what I quoted above is #2, not #1.
You should have gleaned that from my description "far short of".
I.e., the only prescription that makes sense (to me) is:
All Muslims must be excluded from all venues and institutions where the slightest inkling of a possibility for a terror attack is possible.
But I found that your prescription for the problem falls "far short of" it.
The rest of my essay you are commenting on should have further clarified this and disabused you of your elementary misconstruing of my meaning.
So no, I didn't "deliberately" distort the truth (of your position), nor did the last part of my conclusion "claim" to be quoting you directly. The reason I put it in italics was to emphasize how important that prescription of mine is -- you know, the "only" one "that makes sense".
You further may have been confused about the English locution "makes sense", thinking of it as a neutral description which could be good or bad; but in some terms, that locution definitely means something good (if "sense", that is, is a good thing, which I am not unusual in regarding it so).
As for the broader points of your position, I will respond as soon as I can later today, if possible.
I am not generally known as someone that won't allow for philosophical differences to arise between people (and that's NOT implying that you would), and particularly not when people, through different ways of thinking tend to veer towards the (more or less) same point of view on a particular subject. If anything, I have been a longtime participant on JW (although I have been known under another moniker in the past), and I have regularly found that you have indeed much useful things to say (which we should take into account) at least on a lot of matters that would concern the Islam-critical community. And therefore, keeping pluralism in mind, I find it very regrettable to have found that you were banned, as a matter of fact. Not only that, I have regularly read your blog to see which points could be potentially elaborated on on JW, and I still think many of the things you make mention of DO make a lot of sense, to a certain extent. I also have to agree that the still inchoate anti-Islam movement as you put it, tends to be a bit incoherent with regards to fundamental issues many people seem to be gleefully glancing over. Arriving at similar conclusions, from whatever philosophical viewpoint, to me is more important to establish that coherence in the future. And I tend to believe my own position doesn't really differ all that much from your own. The only thing I tried to establish are the pragmatical issues that might occur when we integrate a deportation aspect into our immigration policies. Something that presents obvious problems, in my mind. That's basically the prime issue I was concentrating on.
Indeed, the use of italics basically made me feel as if I had been quoted literally. Misconstruing therefore is a consequence of social convention and the impossibility to sustain a particular way of phrasing things with the support of non-verbal communication on blogs. Which has happened to me before. That's all there is to it.
I rather agree to disagree to some extent in my dealings with people, rather than just flatly fall out with someone on the basis of slight details within a particular discourse or a particular way of putting things into words. I still think what you are doing is worthwhile,though, enough at least for someone like me to take notice of it.
Thanks Anushirvan,
I appreciate your compliments and regret about my banning from Jihad Watch.
With regard to one of your observations in your first comment:
"If people in general will become aware of the latter part, the taqqiyya strategy, it will become even more obvious that negative perceptions of some minorities will worsen. The consequences are manifold.
"1) there may come a time when the general public might rally behind the idea that ANY member of such a minority has to be scrutinized by security agencies as soon as such a person enters a country.
"2) such a view will undoubtedly lead to discrimination of all of these minorities and people will not have the common sense to start differentiating between Muslims and let's say Arab Christians, Indian Hindus, Pakistani Sikhs or Sri Lankan Bhuddists, and the like."
I think you underestimate the intelligence of Westerners. As time goes along, and especially if Westerners become more knowledgeable about taqiyya, their ability to make the rational distinction between the one and only People who are causing 95% of the terrorism and religious-based violence around the world, and other ethnic Peoples, will become enhanced, not deteriorated. I wonder if your dismal view of Westerners might not have something to do with a residual PC MC in your system, which harbors a depressingly pessimistic view of Westerners and assumes they always have some baneful prejudice lurking beneath the surface, if not checked.
In fact, the modern West is the least prejudiced, least racist, most tolerant and open collection of societies in all world history -- in large part because the healthy part of the West rallied together and beat the shit out of the malignant part during WW2 (and later, less turbulently and rapidly, during the long slow victory over Communism (WW3, perhaps).
More later.
Anushirvan,
With regard to your concerns about "Takfiri" deceit in terms of Muslim agents posing as ethnic people of other cultures/religions, if our Western societies were evolved to a fully (or nearly fully) anti-Islamic intelligence and resolve, then we would have similarly become capable of devising, and deploying, various counter-measures.
We would, for example, test tactics on various Muslims: Do you think even a Muslim steeled in the takfiri subterfuge would be able to resist the following psychological "torture":
Being forced to defecate on a Koran?
Being forced to say vile things about Mohammed while being forced to draw pictures of Mohammed?
I suppose it's possible there exist such extraordinary double agents able to do anything to advance their mission, but are such types of Muslims common, or rare?
At any rate, if what you say is true, then you are contradicting yourself, because on one side you are trying to show how ingenious Muslims can be at taqiyya, while on the other side you are advocating artificially limited measures to prevent infiltration and attacks.
Indeed, I have made the realization that this is tantamount to a utopian way of thinking. And I also seem to remember I once advocated the idea on JW that security agency personnel should for instance infiltrate mosques under the pretense of being Western converts to Islam by dressing the same, growing a beard and even speaking Arabic in order to be able to cite Quranic verses. But that might just be too much of an investment on the part of security firms and might even present us with the grey zone where one can't make the distinction between a real Jihadi, an Western agent or even a double agent. Whereas I once got the idea that we could retaliate by playing the taqiyya game against Jihadis, I am not so sure now that it would be viable.
The only thing I suppose we have to rely on as a society may be that such people are continuously scrutinized behind the scenes by our security agencies with the means they currently have, in the hope that sooner or later, the indignation of Jihadis will cause them to let their guard down.
"...might even present us with the grey zone where one can't make the distinction between a real Jihadi, an Western agent or even a double agent. Whereas I once got the idea that we could retaliate by playing the taqiyya game against Jihadis, I am not so sure now that it would be viable."
The West has had the same problem with double and triple agents ever since espionage became a tool. I don't think the problems outweigh the advantages.
However, measures such as --
espionage
surveillance (of individuals and organizations -- e.g., institutes, mosques, madrassas, etc.)
profiling
etc.
-- are all predicated upon the effectively fatalistic acceptance of millions of Muslims in our midst (with more millions arriving, and being rapidly born). I don't mind such measures as a short-term necessity while we work to enact total deportation. But if total deportation is not pushed for and does not grow as a seed of a collective paradigm shift of a change in orientation on our part, then a frame of mind that remains focused on such delimited measures can serve to reinforce that fatalism.
As your following statement implies --
"The only thing I suppose we have to rely on as a society may be that such people are continuously scrutinized behind the scenes by our security agencies with the means they currently have, in the hope that sooner or later, the indignation of Jihadis will cause them to let their guard down."
-- you seem fatalistic about the problem of Muslims in our midst, and you seem to couple fatalism with a sense that the problem will remain relatively static over time and not metastasize into a far worse, and effectively different problem of emergency proportions.
In fact, Muslims as agents of Islam are not a static problem: they are a volatile, dynamic problem. The longer we wait to deport them collectively, the costlier, messier and bloodier will be the inevitable denouement. I see absolutely no reason why men and women of good will and intelligence should not begin to push for the only measure that makes sense -- total deportation. Societies don't change out of thin air: they change when the people who constitute them change. Changes of mind and of policy have to begin somewhere. It is disheartening to see how so many even in the anti-Islam movement are remaining passive about the long range solution.
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