Thursday, October 08, 2015

"Well, it's been another quiet week in Lake Mobegone..."



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Remember: This grotesquely ghoulish and alarming litany reproduced below represents only a week's worth of the camelshit Muslims are churning out around the world.

Germany: Muslim gang rape victim stabbed in honor killing ordered by her own mother because she was “unclean”
Muslims commit 91 percent of honor killings worldwide. A manual of Islamic law certified as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy by Al-Azhar University, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, says that “retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right.” However, “not subject to retaliation” is “a […]
“The gang left a suspicious package in a pub then waited to see how fast police would arrive and how many officers would be scrambled.” The package was addressed to the Queen, who the jihadis would dearly love to murder. “Fears of new plot to kill the Queen as terror suspects carry out ‘dry run’ […]
Over at PamelaGeller.com I take apart a common media myth: This patently false claim is part of the ongoing Big Lie campaign to try to downplay and minimize the jihad threat. It first surfaced in June, and in wake of the Oregon murders, the media elites are dragging it back out again. But it is […]
“France is to withdraw the French nationality from five “terrorists” the government announced on Tuesday as it continues to crackdown on homegrown jihadists.” This is just common sense. All Western governments should be doing the same thing. “France to strip five ‘terrorists’ of nationality,” The Local, October 6, 2015: France is to withdraw the French […]
“Police said the attackers are yet to be identified but suspect they could be members of a fundamentalist group.” No kidding, really? Not a Christian fundamentalist group, either. “When you meet the unbelievers, strike the necks…” (Qur’an 47:4) More “dialogue” needed, eh, U.S. Catholic bishops? How many jihadis have you turned from their ways by […]
“Urging the jury to return a guilty verdict, Mr Goddard told the High Court in Glasgow that none of Badri’s family and friends knew about these activities.” Yes, no doubt they are shocked! shocked! that he is involved in such activities. What is medical student doing getting involved in jihad activity? Doesn’t he know that […]
“Under Saudi Arabia’s draconian legal system, he is to beheaded and his body crucified in public.” That draconian legal system is known as Sharia, Islamic law. “When you meet the unbelievers, strike the necks…” (Qur’an 47:4) “Indeed, the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and strive upon earth [to cause] […]
“Fight against those who do not obey Allah and his messenger, and do not forbid what he has forbidden, even if they are of the People of the Book, until they pay the jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.” (Qur’an 9:29) Ibn Juzayy says that this verse is “a command to fight the […]
When was the last time you recall a Christian murderer killing a non-Christian and then screaming “Jesus is Lord!”? And then it coming to light that the murderer was given his gun at a local church that had other ties to violent Christians? Happens all the time, right? “Parramatta shooting: Farhad Jabar’s gun allegedly came […]
Against a Russian-led Shi’ite/Orthodox Christian crusade, you see. This shows one reason why the Saudis have not moved energetically against the Islamic State themselves: if they did, they could be facing an internal uprising from Saudis who believe the Islamic State to be manifesting authentic Islam. “Saudi opposition clerics make sectarian call to jihad in […]
 “Hero of the Islamic peoples he will be gratly. [sic] Death to the evil police state of Australia who killed this young child all he is guilty of was being muslim!!” Well, yes, he killed the police official, but he was just an Infidel. “Sydney Shooter Labelled ‘Hero Of The Islamic People’ On Social Media,” […]
The pdf below contains the response that Jihad Watch reader Justin Pulliam received from his Public Information Act request asking for hate mail that the Irving, Texas mayor and police received after the Ahmed Mohamed clock victimhood hoax. A few of the highlights: “our members will watch your child die bleeding and convulsing on the […]
What is noteworthy about this is how selective and one-sided Maher and Dawkins are. They’re all upset about the Marxist anti-Semite Maryam Namazie being banned from speaking at a university because of her views on Islam, but have never said a word while for years Pamela Geller and I and others who tell the same […]
Besides removing supposed temptations to idolatry, Islamic jihadists want to destroy the artifacts of non-Muslim civilizations because doing so testifies to the truth of Islam, as the Qur’an suggests that the destroyed remnants of ancient non-Muslim civilizations are a sign of Allah’s punishment of those who rejected his truth: Many were the Ways of Life […]

Australia: Muslim who screamed “Allahu akbar” after murdering police official regularly attended mosque

 “Police have given no information on the shooter, who media reports said regularly skipped school to pray at a local mosque.” This presumably is the mosque that authorities raided with permission. Probably the raid focused on whether there were weapons inside, and/or visible signs of ties to the Islamic State or al-Qaeda. Did investigators also […]
 “In front of the team leader and relatives in the crowd, the Islamic extremists cut off the fingertips of the boy and severely beat him, telling his father they would stop the torture only if he, the father, returned to Islam,” Christian Aid revealed, according to a report from Morning Star News. “When the team […]
A hadith depicts Muhammad saying: “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him” (Bukhari 9.84.57). The death penalty for apostasy is part of Islamic law according to all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence. This is still the position of all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence, both Sunni and Shi’ite. Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the most renowned […]
 “He was very cruel with me, as if he wasn’t my son. He said I’m an infidel and don’t fear God, and that I legislate against Islam in parliament. My efforts to get him back failed.” “O you who have believed, do not take your fathers or your brothers as allies if they have preferred […]
 “New South Wales state police said the mosque in the western Sydney suburb of Parramatta – close to the scene of the double shooting on Friday afternoon – was raided with the consent of religious leaders.” Do police obtain the consent of drug kingpins before raiding drug dens? And what if the religious leaders had […]
“The government has largely failed to stop more than 250 Americans who have traveled overseas to join or tried to join terrorist groups, including the Islamic State group, a new congressional study concluded on Tuesday.” Why was it the government’s responsibility? Why isn’t it the responsibility of Muslim communities in the U.S.? Why does not […]
They will advance even farther if Assad is removed. And as for the “moderate rebels,” they were never all that moderate. The Free Syrian Army has collaborated with al-Qaeda and terrorized Christians in Syria. “Islamic State gaining ground on Golan border as moderate rebels wither,” by Elhanan Miller, Times of Israel, October 1, 2015: As […]
The first and second intifadas were times when “Palestinian” jihad attacks against Israeli civilians intensified in frequency and ferocity. And here we are again. Some Islamic supremacists in the West have been screaming for Jewish blood for a long time, and now they have it: Reza, now you have what you wanted: “Islamic Jihad Claims […]
That’s the Telegraph subhead on this piece: “Rebels warn that Russian air strikes risk pushing moderates into arms of more powerful extremist groups.” How many times over the years have we heard this — that too strong action against Islamic jihadists would drive “moderates” into the arms of “extremists”? And suddenly there are “moderates” among […]
 “Leading members of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party, Azzam Al-Ahmad and General Sultan Abu Al-Einen, praised the attack, Gendelman said. He added that General Al-Einen, who serves as Abbas’ adviser on NGOs, called for more attacks on Israelis.” Remember, this was an attack on a young civilian couple that left their four small […]
 “Don’t forget that you are Muslim,” she told her sons. “Jihad will not end as long as there are enemies to vanquish.” All this after she converted to Islam. Before she converted to Islam, she was the daughter of a gendarme (still is, actually), and presumably was a reasonably loyal French citizen. Now she is […]
Nissar Hussain said: “Our lives have been sabotaged and this shouldn’t happen in the United Kingdom. We live in a free democratic society and what they are doing to us is abhorrent.” Mr. Hussain, I’m sorry to say it, but you live in a shattered, staggering dhimmi society where terrified officials fear to act on […]
Australian officials should be looking into where Farhad Jabar Khalil Mohammed learned his Islam, and investigating what is being taught in the mosque or mosques he attended. Instead, they’re rushing to warn Australians not to blame the Muslim community for this murder. So when a Muslim kills a non-Muslim in the name of Islam and […]
Those who doubt what Thomas de Maiziere says here should remember that last February the Islamic State said it would soon flood Europe with as many as 500,000 refugees. And an Islamic State operative recently boasted that among the flood of refugees, 4,000 Islamic State jihadis had entered Europe. “They are going like refugees,” he […]
Pat Gooley from the NSW Police Association said: “We are used to being under threat. What’s really concerning police is there’s no rhyme or reason to these current terror threats.” No rhyme or reason? Have you ever heard of jihad, Mr. Gooley? Evidently not. Other police officials, meanwhile, are busy making sure that Farhad Jabar […]
Watch for the Pentagon to issue a detailed map explaining how they’re losing, any minute now. “Taliban take 4th Afghan district in 48 hrs,” ANSA, October 2, 2015 (thanks to Insubria): (ANSA) – Kabul, October 2 – The Taliban on Thursday night took their fourth Afghan district in 48 hours, Warduj in the northeastern province […]
He had a wooden box with “Islamic State” carved on it in his bedroom, and yet his parents were “completely unaware” of his activities. And credulous dhimmi British authorities no doubt nodded gravely and consoled the parents on the tragedy of how their son had been “radicalized.” “British teen receives life sentence for inciting terrorist […]
In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat jihad. “Couple Murdered In Front of Their Children in Samaria Shooting,” Arutz Sheva, October 1, 2015: A shooting attack took place just after 9 p.m. on Thursday night, with initial reports indicating two people in their 30s were […]
 “The cell’s leaders, Karim Abdesalam Mohamed and Ismail Abdelaftif were sentenced to 12 years while the rest each received 10-year sentences.” What will they do when they get out? What will be done in prison to disabuse them of their jihadist sentiments? Why, nothing. Nothing at all. “Spanish Court Sentences 11 for Jihad Recruitment,” Associated […]
There is no indication that Chris Harper Mercer, who murdered thirteen people at Umpqua College and specifically targeted Christians for shooting them in the head, was acting on behalf of the Islamic State, or was even a Muslim at all. But that hasn’t stopped the Islamic State from claiming credit for his murders. After all, they want to “strike terror into the hearts of the […]

UK: 14-year-old Muslim told teacher, “You are on my beheading list”

 “It is clear that he had been radicalised by Isis propaganda accessed by him over the internet.” How clear is it, really? How long are Western authorities going to persist in this delusion without ever asking themselves why the moderate, peaceful Muslim that they assume prevails in their countries is completely unable to withstand the […]

Minnesota leads the U.S. in Muslims who have tried to join the Islamic State

And in response, the leader of the Global Somali Diaspora in Minneapolis is playing the victimhood card. More below. “Minnesota leads the nation in would-be ISIL terrorists from U.S., report finds,” by Paul McEnroe and Allison Sherry, Star Tribune, September 29, 2015: Minnesota leads the nation in the number of people who have left or […]

Taliban jihadis screaming “Allahu akbar” vow to bring Sharia to captured city of Kunduz

Sharia is already the highest law of the land in the constitution of the U.S.-backed Afghan regime, so it is unclear exactly what difference the Taliban are proposing to make. And that’s part of the problem: there is no significant difference in outlook between those we support and those we’re fighting in Afghanistan. “Taliban vow […]

Oregon imam: Fight “against Americans” is “legitimate jihad”

Mohamed Sheikh Abdirahman Kariye is the imam of the largest mosque in Portland, Oregon. It is good that all this has come to light, but is anyone paying any attention to the other Muslims who heard Kariye preach week after week for years? How many other jihadis are in the Portland area? What is being […]

Head of Italian Bishops Conference hits West’s silence on Muslim persecution of Christians

 “Why, we ask the western world, why not raise one’s voice over so much ferocity and injustice?” asked Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, the head of the Italian Bishops Conference (CEI). The Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch Gregory III has also said: “I do not understand why the world does not raise its voice against such acts of […]

On 10th anniversary of publication of Muhammad cartoons, Danish newspaper submits: reprints original page without cartoons

The President of the United States, the Pope, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, and virtually every other Western leader has decided: the freedom of speech must be sacrificed to those who will kill us for exercising it. They have all told us that the proper response to violent intimidation is to give in to […]

UK: Convert to Islam threw acid in face of mother of six, leaving her disfigured and blind in one eye

For years we have seen women who were not thought to be dressed modestly or who were believed to have transgressed against the family honor attacked with acid by Muslims in Pakistan. Now that savage ethos is coming to Western countries. But no one would have dared try to talk Billal Kidd Mujahedin out of […]



 “Controversial Islamic fundamentalist Wisam Haddad has avoided prison over a counter-terrorism raid on his western Sydney home that uncovered weapons, an Islamic State flag, a large stash of extremist DVDs, newspaper clippings and a machete under his bed….Police prosecutor Nick Nicholas cast doubt on Mr Haddad’s claim that he had confiscated the OC spray and […]
He apparently can’t be deported because when he was arrested, “the Iranian Embassy was closed.” UK authorities are far too busy to come back when it is open: the UK Home Office has its hands too full making sure foes of jihad terror can’t enter the country to bother themselves with the trivial matter of […]
 “When you meet the unbelievers, strike the necks…” (Qur’an 47:4) Amine Aassoul should never have been allowed back into Italy after he was deported. “Moroccan gets 30 years for David Raggi murder,” by Samuel Smith, ANSA, September 29, 2015 (thanks to The Religion of Peace): (ANSA) – Terni, September 29 – A court in the […]
 “Of the 1,519 with terrorist associations, 627 provided material support, ‘while under duress,’ to undesignated terrorist groups. Another 189 provided material support, ‘while under duress,’ to designated terrorist groups. Designated terrorist groups are the most dangerous. They are classified as Tier I and Tier II organizations and include groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and Palestinian […]
How did a Muslim from the U.S. come to have the understanding that taking sex slaves and fighting for the Islamic State was his Islamic privilege and duty? After all, we’re constantly told that the Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam, and that Muslims in the U.S. all reject its view of Islam. […]
 “The police have reached their absolute breaking point. Our officials are increasingly being called to confrontations in refugee homes.” Why would the Muslim refugees target the Christian refugees? That doesn’t fit the media narrative of who these refugees are and what they are about at all. But no one will bother to offer an explanation. […]
 “‘I began to feel I was making an important contribution to a global movement that would result in a more just society for Muslims, and I was doing so by advocating what I believed were legitimate approaches based on Quran,’ he said. This was wrong, Ali told the judge at his sentencing. His advocacy for […]
Muslims commit 91 percent of honor killings worldwide. A manual of Islamic law certified as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy by Al-Azhar University, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, says that “retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right.” However, “not subject to retaliation” is “a […]
Countless numbers of lives, billions of dollars wasted, and for what? A government that is going to fall as soon as the last U.S. troops are gone. All this outrageous and tragic waste could have been avoided, but that would have required Washington establishment analysts to drop their rosy comforting fictions about Islam and Sharia, […]
Why did the Muslims torch the monastery? Were the monks drawing cartoons of Muhammad? Did they “talk about extreme, militant Islamists” in a way that “undercut the positive achievements that…Catholics have attained in…inter-religious dialogue with devout Muslims”? Or were they targeted merely for the crime of being Christians, as jihadis will eventually target every Christian […]
 


Sunday, October 04, 2015

How to Pass as a "Moderate Muslim" in the Counter-Jihad

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This is part of my continuing series into the increasingly dismaying collaboration, partnership, bromance -- whatever you want to call it -- between Sam Harris and Maajid Nawaz, a Muslim who, in the past few years since he got out of an Egyptian prison for being a terrorist, has remade himself into a new-and-improved Reformer.  (My previous installment was Does not compute: The Sam Harris/Maajid Nawaz "Conversation".)

After his recent CNN "debate" with a Muslim named Dean Obeidallah (whom  Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch in various articles has variously described as an "Islamic supremacist hate propagandist" and "filmmaker" and "comedian"), Sam Harris penned a post on his blog in which he complained intelligently about not only Obeidallah's "tribalistic" tactics, but also more generally about the depressing quality of the Conversation out there on the problem of Islam.  He titled his blog post, How to Pass as a 'Moderate Muslim' in the Media.  As a skeptic of Harris's newfound collaboration with Nawaz, based upon certain details about him, and more broadly on my broader & deeper skepticism about our ability to trust any Muslim -- since perforce they admire Mohammed and the Koran -- that title immediately connected in my mind to the fact that Harris continues to replicate the very problem he is complaining about in others.

Hence my essay title today.

Sam Harris has apparently already vetted Maajid Nawaz and passed him with flying colors.  Not so fast, Sam, I say.  Play it again, Sam.  It's not too late for Sam Harris to pause, recalibrate, and reconsider his trust of Nawaz.

I.e., Maajid Nawaz still hasn't passed the interview and gotten the job of "Muslim reformer to help the Counter Jihad".  Since, however, the Counter-Jihad remains disorganized, it has no real concerted way to 1) identify problem reformers like Nawaz, 2) devise a vetting process for him, and 3) analyze the results to see if they can bless Nawaz with their imprimatur.

But a man can dream, can't he?  In that spirit, allow me to speculate that the Counter-Jihad finally got its proverbial shit together.  One aspect of that organization would involve a proper vetting process of supposed Muslim "reformers" like Maajid Nawaz.  Let's run through that process which evidently so eludes someone as otherwise so astute as Sam Harris is:

1) Identify the Muslim reformers who need to be vetted.  A Counter-Jihad worthy of the name would apply this universally to any Muslim who claims to be (or who is claimed to be) a reformer.

2) Submit the reformer in question to a series of long conversations/debates (say, 90 minutes) with various strategically key participants.  These various participants would be a combination of anti-Islam analysts and Muslim good cops who are already under suspicion in the Counter-Jihad.  Example, with Maajid Nawaz, he would have to sit down with the following people for conversations/debates:

a) Reza Aslan

b) Tariq Ramadan

c) Zudhi Jasser

d) Bill Warner

e) Andrew Bostom

f) Robert Spencer.

Of course, the first two would be difficult to persuade to sit down in the first place, because they might cunningly perceive that it would undermine their ongoing stealth jihad propaganda efforts.  (Jasser is another matter, much like Nawaz himself.)  The Counter-Jihad would then work on persuading them (perhaps by dangling the carrot that would entice them with the prospect that it would be useful to them).   As a backup measure, if any one of all of those good cop Muslims refuse to participate, they would have Nawaz do a "virtual"  conversation/debate with all three -- essentially, he would engage with video taped excerpts of those three, controlled by both himself and the moderator (with the moderator, a Counter-Jihad person of course, having ultimate control) in terms of pausing and playing in order to engage with the videos.  In this context, the moderator (or moderators) would have to exercise scrupulous oversight to make sure Nawaz doesn't try to get away with his usual slippery evasions and tap-dancing.

3) Submit Nawaz to a battery of questions.  The questioners should prepare detailed follow-up questions to anticipate any tap-dancing maneuvers & sleight-of-hand Nawaz would likely deploy; and they should also be nimble and informed enough to catch Nawaz with spontaneous follow-up questions or calls for clarification.  The questions would include the following.  This list won't be exhaustive; it's just an example of what can and should be done, and thus is an incomplete list, as I may not have thought of everything now. Even if the Counter-Jihad participants (Warner, Bostom, Spencer) bring any one or more of these points up in their discussions with Nawaz, they should be repeated in separate phases of the process.

a) Why did you call your Islamic reform organization "The Quilliam Foundation"?

b) Did you know that Abdullah Quilliam waxed zealously in favor of a global calpihate?

c) Do you support Abdullah Quilliam's rhapsodic enthusiasm for a global caliphate?

d) Did you know that Abdullah Quilliam condemned the British efforts to help Muslims in the Sudan by fighting against the extremist jihadist Mahdi Jihad?  Did you also know that Abdullah Quilliam fervently enjoined fellow Muslims to do the same, to condemn the British efforts to fight against the extremist Mahdi Jihad?

e) Do you support Abdullah Quilliam with regard to the two points mentioned in (d)?

f) Do you admire Muhammad?  Do you agree with the Koran when it elevates Muhammad to the "best model of conduct" for all Muslims and when it elevates him to the "perfect man"?

g) [List a few of the key words & deeds of Muhammad that any reasonable person would agree are horrible, vile, pernicious, and dangerous for society if emulated, then ask]  Do you agree that Muhammad said and did these things?  [If he says "no", then ask] Why do you say no?  [This may be the place then to follow up with questions about what he thinks about the various apparatus of the Sunna -- the hadiths, sira, and tafsirs -- which detail at length the horrible facts of Muhammad.  It is doubtful that a clever snake like Nawaz would actually be honest and say "yes" -- but he may well try to waffle between "yes" and "no".  At this point, the questioners should focus on the implication of a "yes" between the lines there and seize upon it with probing questions -- in order to force him out of his untenable attempt to occupy the non-existent position between "yes" and "no".]

h) [Basically the same questioning process would be applied with regard to Allah and the Koran -- both of which one of course reasonably assumes Nawaz admires.]

Note:  As mentioned previously, each question may well entail follow-up questions before moving on to the next question.  However -- very important -- the questioners should be on guard against the typical Islamic tactic of generating red herrings calculated to derail the line of questioning and obfuscate the resulting evasions.

On a broader level, the various specific stipulations I have mentioned involved in the questioning process may seem to someone like Sam Harris, who seems anxious to err on the side of a congenial "conversation", to be overly cynical & confrontational.  However, Sam Harris is an intelligent, bright fellow who has made it the central focus of his life since 911 to study the problem of Islam; and as such, he has no excuse not to know (or at least not to be actively open to learning) that, to put it bluntly, there is no defense of Islam, of Allah, or of the Koran.  Once we seriously realize this, it puts Maajid Nawaz at a terrible -- if not devastating -- disadvantage in terms of his attempts to sell us the idea that he's both a Reformer and a Muslim.  But if we're going to vet him -- and we must, the stakes are too high -- we must proceed lucidly with this in mind.  The onus would be on Nawaz to come up with a plausible, persuasive construct that avoids the Scylla and Charybdis of simultaneously affirming Islam while affirming decency, human rights, and the safety of free societies.  It's a formidable onus, verging on being impossible.  In one sense, the whole vetting process would be a robust effort to try to expose Nawaz as a Better Cop -- better than the standard-issue "Good Cops" who have successfully fooled the PC MC Mainstream; better precisely in order to fool those who are slowly wising up to the problem of Muslim taqiyya and no longer fall for the Good Cops.  If Nawaz is a genuine reformer, the logic goes, he should have no problem with submitting to this, and he should be able to pass the test. 

The fact that the Counter-Jihad would even bother to vet a Muslim reformer like Nawaz at all, indicates that it believes in the possibility, however remote, that the Muslim reformer could pull it off and actually come up with something tenable.  However, the Counter-Jihad should uphold the strictest standards during the questioning and discussion process.

Sam Harris thus far in his vetting process of Maajid Nawaz has apparently applied relaxed standards, which is quite dismaying.   It's not too late for Sam Harris to change his mind on this.


Saturday, September 19, 2015

Does not compute: The Sam Harris/Maajid Nawaz "Conversation"


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Why does Maajid admire Muhammad and honor the memory of jihadist W.H. Abdullah Quilliam?

That was a tweet I posted back in February.  Needless to say, nobody responded.  It's not like this is an exigently important issue or anything, right...?

* * *

In a recent discussion between Sam Harris and Maajid Nawaz held at the Kennedy Forum at Harvard University, Harris briefly describes how his collaboration with Nawaz came about:  First they had a brief unpleasant encounter, which at the time Harris thought would not bear any further fruit.  Later, Harris initiated another encounter which he says he thought would only be one blog post's worth, but it turned out to become "such a productive dialogue" on the telephone, that he and Maajid decided to embark upon a closer and more extended interaction, leading to the "small book" that documents it.

The collaboration obviously has continued after the book, even if it may only, or largely, be a matter of normal promotion.  In his brief introduction near the beginning of this video discussion, Harris describes what he calls "the regressive liberal pushback" against the collaboration, which he characterizes as "amazingly cynical and ugly".  When I heard those words, I immediately assumed Harris meant coming from the "Islamophobes", and thus cynical concerning the fruitfulness of a collaboration by an Islamocritical analyst (Harris) with a studied deceiver doing taqiyya (Nawaz).  It quickly turns out that Harris is talking about the opposite phenomenon -- a what I would term PC MC complaining that Harris has no right to be advising Muslims on how to reform their Islam and, in the present context of his collaboration with a Muslim (Nawaz), referring to the latter as "Sam's lapdog", according to Harris saying it was an "obscenity" for a "white non-Muslim" like Harris to have the audacity to declaim about Islamic reform.  As Harris is clarifying this misconception, he reveals a most telling admission:

"If you read the book you'll see that if anything, my views and my way of speaking about this problem... have been more modified than Maajid's by our... collaboration."

The cynical "Islamophobe" (as many if not most in the mainstream would label me) would be supremely unsurprised by this and consider the expectation that Nawaz would change his views to be naive and gullible in the extreme.  But then, that's the overall problem with this Conservation in the first place: to what extent is Harris being naive and gullible in this collaboration?  I'll get to that question a little later.

Not long after his telling admission, Harris's logic flows into a broader outlet, so to speak.  When the moderator asks him a fundamental question to start things rolling -- "Is Islam a religion of peace or a religion of war?" -- Harris indicates two things in his non-answer:  

1) with questions like these, he says, his instincts are different from those of Nawaz, and he prefers to "defer" to Nawaz;

2)  and from #1, it becomes more acutely clear what's been going on all this time:  Nawaz is not merely -- or rather, not really -- a Muslim from whom Harris, the concerned non-Muslim Westerner, is trying to ascertain why his co-religionists are trying to kill us and destroy our society.  No: Nawaz is a partner in a Conversation about how "we can move forward".

This approach, this tone, this posture, which Harris is setting for the overall "effort" is bracketing out and begging the question of whether Nawaz is himself Friend or Foe.  Apparently, Harris already concluded that Nawaz is, naturally, a Friend.  At what point did Harris conclude this?  What led him to this conclusion?  Does he hold an axiom or two which tends to seduce him into being so charitable with, rather than suspicious of, Nawaz?  The answers to these questions may reveal why it is that Harris, apparently, sees fit to avoid the hard questions that should be put to Nawaz (for an extended discussion on just such a disquisition, see my follow-up essay, How to pass as a "Moderate Muslim" in the Counter-Jihad).

What Harris says next in the video seems to indicate an answer.  He says basically that he trusts Nawaz as a partner in cri-- er, I mean, in conversation because while Nawaz may initially sound like the typical Islamopologist when adjudicating (read: evading) the question about Islam (making pointed reference to Reza Aslan here), Harris claims Nawaz does not rest there:  "He admits there is a link between specific ideas and specific behaviors."  For Harris, this vaguely warm and fuzzy concession is enough to exonerate Nawaz and distinguish him from the Good Cops, the Islamopologists who try to fool the mainstream into thinking there is no problem with Islam.  What Harris is not seeing, I maintain, is that there are two alternatives to the Good Cop:

1) the sincere Moderate Muslim who will join us in a conversation about this most eixgent and thorny problem their Islam is causing the world

or

2) the "Better Cop" who is still an Islamopologist doing stealth jihad -- only doing it more cleverly, so as to fool the warier among us who have begun to educate ourselves about the horrors of Islam sufficiently to become resistant to the standard-issue wiles of the garden-variety Good Cops.

Certain things about Nawaz don't add up to a #1 option; but do indicate Door #2.  To palpate them better, one would have to ask Nawaz the tougher questions, and not let him squirm and wriggle deftly sideways and every which way but loose.

After watching this video discussion, I was disappointed.  Harris failed to confront Nawaz on the most key issues that would expose him (or exonerate him, if his moderation is genuine) -- among them being two I can think of right now:

1) Why did Nawaz name his foundation after W.H. "Abdullah" Quilliam, a British Muslim convert of the 19th century who advocated resistance to British efforts to help Sudanese Africans against a fanatical jihad, and who, in addition, fervently supported the Caliphate?

2) Why does Nawaz distinguish "Islam" from "radical Islamism" (whereby only the latter is of concern to our safety and human rights)?  Or more pointedly, how in the world can Nawaz not know that many if not most of the human rights abuses and acts of jihadism & terrorism we would locate only in the Tiny Minority of Extremists Who Have Nothing To Do With Islam are in fact found squarely and massively in normative, traditional, mainstream Islam?  Can Nawaz be that ignorant of his own culture and history, of which he has been a zealous (now moderately so) student all his life?

These aren't the only questions about Nawaz; but they'll do for now, and are certainly among the most important that need to be clarified thoroughly, with absolute candor and ingenuousness, and without the usual artistry he seems so well versed in.  Another subtler question would bring up and probe why it is that when he mentions his arrest, incarceration and torture at the hands of Egyptian police while he was a dangerous terrorist member and later leader by his own admission of the evil and dangerous Hizb-ut-Tahrir jihadist organization, his locutions seem to indicate that he was wronged and mistreated.  One almost detects victim grievance rhetoric when he refers to this episode in his life, describing the Egyptian police imprisoning him for his "Islamist political views" -- a decidedly anodyne way of referring to the mass-murderous terrorism in the name of religious fanaticism with a goal for world domination through a Caliphate for which he was an ardent activist for years.

One also gets the sense as Nawaz is recounting all this, with seemingly sincere passion and mildly affect righteous indignation, that he is trying to establish his bonafides as a sincere interlocutor, rather cleverly doing so in a sideways manner:

"Look, folks: I've been through the wringer, I've been around the jihad block, I was wild and crazy Islamist in my youth, I was put in prison and tortured, I've been attacked by neo-Nazis on the streets of London -- and now some white liberal has the gall to impugn my credentials as a Muslim who can talk about reform...!"  

And the pièce de résistance is when he twists the liberal attack on his credentials into an expectation they are trying to force upon him, whereby in order to be a "good Muslim" he has to be "frothing at the mouth" -- i.e., sounding like an extremist.  When we pause to consider this, we see that it is a masterful stroke by Nawaz -- he's making himself out to be a victim of the same politically correct liberals who regularly attack the Counter-Jihad, thus earning him brownie points for his Counter-Jihad street cred.

But has he yet earned this cred?  Nawaz's exhibition at the beginning of this conversation is also a slyly backhanded way of wriggling into the position he should still be auditioning for under interrogation, but which he enjoys by virtue of being accorded undue respect by the likes of Harris.  Rather than more conventionally defending his credentials against the wary and skeptical Counter-Jihad, he finds an ingenious way to arrive at the same result by defending himself against the liberals who attack him for trying earnestly to be a Reformer!  And no doubt if Sam Harris ever read my account here, he would find it excessively cynical, so far gone is he in his trust in Nawaz as they walk hand in hand toward the sunrise of a new dawn of "Islamic Tolerance".

From there, Nawaz goes on to articulate (or rather, retail) his standard Better Cop argument, whereby with the skill of a Cirque du Soleil acrobat, he deftly juggles two opposing vectors:  1) yes the problem of Muslims pursuing violent jihad is bad, I feel your pain -- but 2) it's a "minority" position while the "vast majority" of Muslims interpret Islam in a peaceful, benign way, so let's not get carried away in our concern.  As his articulation continues, he plays the two off each other -- one moment magnifying the danger of this "minority" to beef up his counter-jihad cred, the next moment reminding us that, after all, it's only a marginal minority to remind us not to be Islamophobic.  His rhetoric is riddled with this paradox, parrying left and right like a skilled sophist. 

As Nawaz talks on the video, the examples of his sophistry I could cite accumulate, and would burden this blog post today with more details than I intended.  I can advert to one more (at about the 26 minute mark, before and after) -- a dazzling display of double-speak selling itself as honest analysis (at least for those who can see the Camel in the Room and the Emperor With No Clothes On astride it) that almost takes one's breath away.  After the moderator alludes to the problem of naming the problem -- how our politically correct culture is too timid to say, as she puts it, "This isn't extremism, it's Islamic extremism" -- a problem of the problem she mentions is of concern to Harris, the ball is then passed to Nawaz (or rather he seems to seize it, since the moderator at that point was alluding to Harris's position).  Nawaz then takes the audience on a little garden path of talking about the Harry Potter books (warming them up with a joke about how he read them all "in prison"), and specifically about what he calls the "Voldemort effect".  This is based on the theme in the books whereby the people are "too afraid to name" the evil Voldemort, always referring to him as "He Who Shall Not Be Named".  So far, so good.  This is the incisive, albeit elementary, problem of the problem in its crystalline crux.  Seconds later, Nawaz has thrust the keen blade of his jihad of the tongue into the heart of his audience without them feeling a thing, when he deploys his "Voldemort effect" to do precisely what it is supposed to counter!  Thus:

"Now, I took that.. Voldemort effect, of being too scared, too petrified, to name the problem, when actually it's staring you in the face -- is what has happened with Islamist extremism!  And the problem is that we have been unable to name the problem!"

Notice that in Nawaz's locution, he deftly avoids even the "-ic" of the moderator's "Islamic extremism" she was saying the mainstream is too afraid to pronounce, and substitutes instead the furtively softer "-ist" of "Islamist extremism".  And this is not even factoring in that the phrase "Islamic extremism" itself is already a softening of the problem -- which should be squarely and unflinchingly Islam itself, straight no chaser.  Indeed, adding such padding as "extremist" or "extremism" or "radical" or "radicalism" (and there are many such terms calculated to soften the blow of Islam in our mainstream Denial) is already an expression of the very same fear which Nawaz is supposed to be boldly and robustly countering with his "Voldemort effect".

In vain we sit and watch the video unfold, waiting for Harris to point out the excruciatingly obvious sleight-of-hand Nawaz just performed; but he never does.  He just sits there calmly acquiescing -- or oblivious -- to the linguistic, intellectual and moral trick that was just perpetrated on stage beside him.  Nawaz then takes our breath away even further when he goes on to say that when people avoid "naming the problem", they are in effect serving to "blur the lines" and "obfuscate" the issue, thus actually facilitating those who wish to condemn all Muslims -- those who "take pleasure and delight... in stigmatizing every single Muslim" (and he hastens to point out that his new friends "Sam" and "Ayaan" (that's Ayaan Hirsi Ali, in the audience) do NOT do this).

That is to say, as we collect our breath to see what he's done yet again:  by pretending to "name the problem" through actually avoiding the honest "Islam" and substituting for it the deftly weasel phrase "Islamist extremism" (not even "Islamic" -- too close for comfort for Nawaz), we prevent the effect which "not naming the problem" tends to foster -- namely, the effect of stigmatizing all Muslims.  This is pure balderdash.  Nawaz has to know that in fact the general mainstream reluctance to name the problem is just as responsible for protecting Islam as is his locution which also avoids naming the problem (but which only pretends to boldly name it).  What he's doing is cleverly co-opting the tactic of seeming to be boldly counter-jihad, while simultaneously being cleverly soft (the softness, for good measure, mantled in the righteously respectable disinclination to tar all Muslims with the same brush, a sin which "Sam" and "Ayaan" agree to eschew, of course).  I.e., Nawaz is transforming the Counter-Jihad -- with many gullible members in it climbing aboard his peace train -- into a protection racket for Islam and the "vast majority of Muslims".  Not that the Counter-Jihad needs that much tweaking, what with the squishy nougaty underbelly it seems to have, thanks to all the Softies in it, and thanks to the lack of a coherent platform.

A few paragraphs above, we referred to the skillful sophistry Nawaz employs.  It needs to be skillful because it rests on an inherently untenable if not incoherent foundation.  Its inherent flaws can be detected by the careful (and educated) listener.  For example, we see this when he delineates the two problems that inhere to the problem of the problem -- the problem of "being afraid to name the problem" (which we discussed above) -- as 1) a problem external to Islam, and 2) a problem internal to Islam.  We've already shown above how Nawaz handles the first of these problems, twisting the nature of the problem to suit his self-aggrandizement as a Muslim Reformer.  His handling of the second problem is no less devious. He says that this misnaming of the problem has the effect of disempowering the reformers of the Muslim world.  He doesn't fully explain how and why it has this effect; but it doesn't flow logically from his previous claim he made minutes before -- namely, that "the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful".  If this were so, then it shouldn't be that difficult to "empower" the "reformers".  Indeed, there wouldn't be any need for "reformers" if the "vast majority" are already peaceful.  His language that is heavily laden with a sense that "reformers" are beleaguered and vulnerable to the wrong rhetoric that names the problem incorrectly does not make sense, again, if the "vast majority" are already on the right track.  What's really going on with his language is that he's juggling a paradox through sophistry, trying to play off the force of the two sides of the contradiction he's otherwise trying to conceal, which if revealed would expose the fundamental incoherence of his position (if nimbly perpetual tap-dancing can be termed a "position"). 

Indeed, his audience is so gullibly naive, that it's almost like watching a million-dollar Vegas magic act performing for a children's birthday party.  Perhaps Nawaz thinks he has to up his game, or keep it up, for Harris.  If only.

Apparently, given this video, all this charlatanry worked on Harris, and Nawaz is still his partner and collaborator, since throughout this discussion Harris tacitly gives Nawaz his blessing and not once contradicts him.  This means Nawaz gets a free pass and doesn't have to do any 'Splainin' at all -- that ship has sailed as he and Sam "go forward".  I.e., even if the book involved some disagreements, they obviously worked them out enough for Harris to continue the "partnership".


Be that as it may, the issue is too important for us to proceed without making sure Nawaz answers all our questions to our satisfaction.  Harris seems to be jumping the gun here, setting sail on a course before making sure the boat is fit and sailworthy.  If Harris doesn't learn this in time, the West at large will, the hard way. 

* * *

At this point in my essay, I have watched about 1/3 of the video.  As I've had enough of the slimy sophistry of Nawaz, I will review only the contributions of Harris for the remainder.  Hopefully, he won't continue sitting there acquiescing to his "partner" like a bump on a log, as he has for the first third.

Alas, now that he's speaking up more, it's not helping.  For example, he notes the problem of Muslim countries where liberal values taken for granted in the West are still under assault:

"... to be gay... or even a woman in a country like Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia or Bangladesh... these are unlucky places to be... [as] a minority of that kind..."

Notice how Harris failed to mention "Pakistan" -- the home country of Nawaz -- in that list.  Not only should he have mentioned it, he should be questioning Nawaz about how and why his home country is a filthy, evil, anti-liberal hellhole.  But that would hurt their precious collaboration, apparently.

Soon thereafter, Harris gives his blessing to the terminology Nawaz has dictated.  In the context of complaining about the problem of liberalism (or "pseudo-liberalism"), and how, as he rightly notes, we can criticize Christianity all day long, he says:

"...the moment you try to shine a light on the problem of...  I think [motioning his hand to his left to refer to Nawaz] appropriately described as 'Islamism'... for this conversation... the full armamentarium of political correctness and... cries of racism just hits you full in the face..."

First off, Harris doesn't even see the discrepancy he himself is formulating here:  he is comparing the attitude of the PC MCs when one criticizes Christianity with their attitude when one criticizes "Islamism".  The proper comparison would be between Christianity and Islam.  Not to mention that he has yet to explain why in our Conversation we must only address this artificial construct "Islamism" rather than Islam.  Whoever that "white liberal" was who accused Nawaz of being the "lapdog" of Sam Harris got it wrong:  it seems to be the other way around.

At any rate, I await delivery of the new book, Islam and the Future of Tolerance, from Amazon.com and will read it forthwith, to see if it in any way redeems this disappointing video exchange. From all the buzz Harris generated before the book, and now in promotion to give its sales "legs", one would get the hopeful impression that the Counter-Jihad has been reconfigured and rebooted, updated & upgraded to a new level where we can finally see a new horizon.  So far, however, the experience has been more like trying out Windows 10 and realizing it's not as good as the previous OS before the much-ballyhooed Windows 8.

Ironically, back in June of this year on the Sam Harris forum, I posted a topic titled, "I won't buy Sam Harris' new book until he responds to my question" -- the question being essentially what my tweet encapsulated up top, though articulately unpacked.  Needless to say, Sam Harris did not respond to my post (nor to my email which I noted in that post I had sent to him a few days before). 

* * *

Further Reading:



Harry's Place [particularly zeroing in on this useful information about Maajid Nawaz and another (albeit less famous) "Better Cop" -- Usama Hasan]

Sunday, September 06, 2015

Diana West weighs in on PC

http://whistleblower-newswire.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/image0153.png

In a recent essay titled Question: What is PC? (and perhaps even more so in a subsequent essay, First Communism, then Islam) Diana West explores a dimension of our current Problem of the Problem that deserves far more thought & analysis than it has received in the Counter-Jihad.

West is one of my favorite writers; and yes, there's a big but coming...  I think in this essay she misses a chance to really tackle her titular question.  Instead of probing the broader context and source of this phenomenon, she lapses into a focus on one (major) symptom of it -- namely, Communism; or rather, the successful, albeit amorphous campaign, ever since the 1960s, to make anti-Communism bristle with radioactive cooties throughout our culture.  She's right about that aspect of the problem, of course (she's produced a wealth of useful research and analysis on it), but demonstrates a less sure grasp of the deeper reason why such a campaign turned out to be so effective.

One may disagree with my assessment, if one thinks that Soviet saboteurs and their useful fellow travelers by themselves could effect such a drastic and comprehensive paradigm shift.  While it's possible they did, and while it's certainly documentable and reasonably inferred that they undertook this subversion earnestly and assiduously, it seems unlikely their success was due wholly to their efforts, as though America was some kind of hapless sheep, willing over time to submit to -- to the point of practically aiding and abetting (if not positively cheering on) -- an ideological invasion this profoundly contrary to her core values.  This would indicate not merely a sheeplike passivity (already questionable on such a mass scale throughout all levels of popular culture), but even some strange species of cultural and psychological zombification.  I.e., a more reasonable inference would factor in an already existing cultural predisposition that has nothing to do with Communism per se (at least not directly) and that widens the historical scope considerably.  (Indeed, Communism would be a symptom of that broader historico-cultural process, rather than an agent or cause of it, as West's formulation seems to imply.)

I think one major motivating factor for West's position on this is reasonably defensive: after her years of research on the subject of Communist infiltration and anti-Communism, she became increasingly dismayed, then disturbed at the "court history" which has monstrously minimized the problem of that infiltration (including, in no small part, enabling the cultural paradigm that has decreed that anti-Communism should be demonized), and in many ways has aided and abetted the propaganda that whitewashes the massively pernicious career of Communism in the 20th century.  So West, I think, has been caught up in righting the wrong of that revisionist history, and the sheer magnitude of the complex lie of that "court history" has consumed her attention, even to the point, apparently, of magnifying the role of this revisionism such that it becomes transformed from a massive symptom, which would have a history so long it precedes even the advent of the idea of Communism in the 19th century, into the cause.

Which brings me to what I believe is the second factor explaining West's perspective on this: she may not have a full enough appreciation & appraisal of the long history of a mélange of attitudes & axioms that prepare & predispose a society to so readily swallow the romanticization of Communism coupled with the demonization of anti-Communism -- and then, fast forward to our post-911 world, to so readily swallow the romanticization of Islam coupled with the demonization of the anti-Islam movement.  One indication of West's intense focus on the former problem is a parenthetical comment she made in her above-linked article which may breeze by the attention of many readers.  Alluding first to the former problem, her parenthesis merges into the latter problem:

What is most breathtaking here, though, is the obdurate endurance of the glaring lie. In fact, a greater intellectual hoax than the Saleming of the Red hunters is beyond imagination. (Islam-is-peace is as great, but no greater.) [bold emphasis added]

It's certainly West's right to think the Problem of the Problem with regard to Islam as no greater than the Problem of the Problem with regard to Communism, but after all her research and astute analysis on Islam over the years, I can only conclude that she hasn't fully digested and absorbed the mountain of data about it that indicates it is a far greater danger, and its whitewashing a far greater problem.  She wouldn't be alone in this by any stretch; my assessment of the Counter-Jihad indicates that, alas, perhaps a slim majority minimize the problem in one way or another.

The pertinent question in this regard, I suppose, would be:  If I'm correct that West is not adequately appreciating the longer history of the process of PC MC moving from one idea among many over centuries, to becoming the dominant, fashionable worldview of the entire West by the mid-20th century; how would her thesis change if she did in fact appreciate this longer history?  One way to answer that question is to probe her words and see what it is she is inferring in the absence of this longer history, when the protracted spectacle of Communist infiltration and the subsequent dominance of the fashion of anti-Communism comes to her analytical attention.

In a recent email correspondence I had with West, I briefly discussed the broader problem, and mentioned the 16th century statesman and philosopher Montaigne as one example clearly showing that PC MC antecedes Marxism not only by years or decades, but literally by centuries (I also gave her a link to my essay -- Montaigne: Godfather of PC MC? -- which in lengthy and meticulous detail presents an argument backing this up).  West implied that she knew about this; and yet her essay seems not to factor this in at all in its tight focus on Communist subversion from without (U.S.S.R.) and from within (Soviet proxies, agents and fellow travelers inside America).  My counter-thesis, to repeat, is that the whitewashing of Communism -- and the corollary demonization of Anti-Communism -- would not have enjoyed the mainstream traction it has in fact enjoyed, had there not already been a pre-existing predisposition to think this way which, for want of a better term, I call "PC MC".  But West's rhetoric heavily implies that PC MC is a construct and a plot machinated by Marxists, and she conflates three terms that have nuanced distinctions -- "Leftism", "Marxism", and "PC".  By implying an indiscriminate equivalence among all three sociopolitical forces, it becomes easier for her to concentrate on her focus -- and thereby to make the error of ascribing too much evil volition and direction to the problem in its, let us say, domestic dimension.  A similar dynamic occurs with those I term the "Real Problemers" of the Counter-Jihad when they blame the Problem of the Problem of Islam (that is, the Problem of Western Myopia to the Problem of Islam and consequent whitewashing & enablement of Islam) on a Dastardly Cabal of "Leftist" "Elites" -- as though there were not millions of pleasantly & sincerely confused, unwitting enablers of Islam abounding throughout the West, precisely making possible the myopia that constitutes the Problem of the Problem!