The Pipes Dream, revisited

I posted the following comment on the website of Daniel Pipes, who took Pam Geller to task for her question-raising of Governor Perry's associations with Grover Norquist and the Aga Khan.

I've written about the asymptotic (if not PC MC) stance of Pipes before --

Pot Shots at the Pipes Dream

and

The Pipes Dream through a Glassman darkly.

Here follows my comment I posted today:

Pipes, in response to a reader on his site who wrote --

"...the Aga Khan (the leader of one of the most peaceful of today's Muslim sects, the Ismailis)..."

responded by saying (among other things):

"The Aga Khan is a leading anti-Islamist figure..."

However, some ordinary person, in the comments field of another blog, who is not a vaunted expert on Islam as is Mr. Pipes, easily found the following interview with the Aga Khan -- an interview which raises legitimate suspicions about his "moderateness" -- and that ordinary person who is not an expert as is Mr. Pipes presents the findings of that Aga Khan interview with an informative and appropriate commentary. Here follows that commentary:

[BEGIN QUOTE]

He [the Aga Khan] begins the interview attacking the Pope for a lecture he gave in which he quoted some statements by Byzantine Emperor Manuel, which were negative on Islam. He takes the Pope to task not on whether the statements represented factual historical record, but because they caused "great unhappiness in the Islamic world." The Khan goes on to describe the period of history during which the newly emergent Islamic entity existed alongside Byzantium as a period "of extraordinary theological exchanges and debates between the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim world." No. Actually, that was a period of incessant violent warfare committed by the muslims against Byzantium that only ended with that city's fall to the Turks in fifteenth century. That's what's known as an attempt at whitewash.

The interviewer continues by asking the Khan if Islam has a problem with reason. The Khan responds by asserting that "Of the Abrahamic faiths, Islam is probably the one that places the greatest emphasis on knowledge...Islam is a faith of reason." Okay, so apart from being a complete bullshitter, we can see clearly this is not a man dedicated to Pluralism- he's an outright partizan for Islam.

Spiegel goes on to ask the Khan about the root causes of terrorism. Khan responds by citing "Unsolved political conflicts, frustration and, above all, ignorance. Nothing that was born out of a theological conflict." LOL! Haven't heard that one before. Not in any Koranic exhortations to violence against the unbelievers, you understand- just damned ignorance! He then dissembles with the usual "all religions have been violent at one time or another" and finishes on the subject by asserting that Islam specifically has never called for violence- "...it is a faith of peace.".This is a flat-out demonstrable, thru the teeth bald-faced lie. The man's a snake.

He attacks Samuel Huntington for his book The Clash of Civilizations and the "dangerous ignorance" that work displayed. And then went on about there not being a "clash of civilizations", but a "clash of ignorance".

Here's the true insight into the character and mind of the Khan- when asked by Spiegel which side was responsible for that clash, Khan responds by saying-

"Both. But essentially the Western world."

"Both", that's the Pluralist talking. Feigning even-handedness. But after that pathetic attempt at seeming objective and non-judgmental, he goes on to lay the blame squarely at the feet of the West. We see here, the Khan showing his true face- the devotee and partizan for Islam. Like all classic Islamist liars, he'll show the false face of moderation here, and his true face Islamic face there. He really thinks we're too stupid to see through his act. Well, it would seem that Rick Perry is.

When asked about the compatibility of Islam with Democracy, he answers by saying his Democratic beliefs don't trace back to the French or the Greeks, "...but to an era 1,400 years ago." And begins going off about the Prophet(PBUH) blah blah blah. He goes on to attack Bush for Iraq, assures the interviewer that he's in regular contact with the leaders of Iran, and then pushes for the normalization of Hamas, as they just need a chance to moderate.

This is an interview that could have been given by Tariq Ramadan, or Imam Ralph or Ibe Hooper or any one of the other notorious stealth Islamist creeps. Anyone here still care to defend this guy?

It's case closed on the Khan. The question is now- wtf was Rick Perry thinking in hooking up with this guy?

[END QUOTE]

**************

To which I would add: wtf is Pipes smoking in his pipe...?

Evidence demonstrating that mainstream conservative non-Elites are PC MC about Islam

I didn't say my evidence was definitive, or rock-solid. But it does reflect a disquieting probability.

I speak of a community of commenters at an aggressively conservative blog called Ace of Spades HQ. I had never heard of that blog before, until Robert Spencer in an article at Jihad Watch noted that the owner, "Ace", pooh-poohed the concerns which Spencer and Pam Geller have about the latest Conservative flavor-of-the-month and possible Obama-unseater, the Texas Governor and Republican (both Texan and a Republican -- he must be a real Conservative!) Rick Perry.

I wrote a note about this here last night (scroll down to the posting immediately below this one).

Anywho, when I got to the "Ace" article linked by Spencer, I noted the remarkable number of comments -- over 500 (by contrast, the Spencer article still only has 98 comments, and most of the time Jihad Watch rarely goes beyond 50; and I just checked the latest posting "Ace" put up -- some fluffy puffy gripe about how the liberal MSM is reporting on Hurricane Irene: within minutes of publishing it, there are already over 200 comments). So, as that pro-Perry anti-Spencer-&-Geller thread was still growing fast at the time, I decided to roll up my pants, kick off my boat shoes, and jump in.

That was last night. This morning, I see that are over 1,000 comments! Granted, the thread, now 24 hours old, has outlived the short attention span of commenters there. And this ostensibly amazing quantity, to be sure, becomes somewhat less amazing when one looks more closely at the content and realizes that a good number among them represent short, snippy, often foul-mouthed and utterly insubstantial pot-shots -- not to mention that the total number of commenters seems to be no more than approximately 50 (perhaps 100 or so, at least on that particular thread), with a minority among them making most of the noise.

As I began to immerse myself and participate, I quickly realized that in effect I was conducting a laboratory experiment: I would express my usual anti-Islam and anti-Muslim sentiments, and this would cause reactions -- as inexorably and as mechanically as any experiment with chemicals or pistons. What aggrieved was the fact that the reactions caused were, more or less, no different than the reactions one would expect in the comments field of a solidly Leftist website: reactions reflecting an anxious concern to defend Muslims from "bigotry" and a closely related hostility to anyone who dared to show signs of such a hate-thought-crime.

I.e., the spectacle of that comments field, once it is sufficiently digested (and don't worry, one doesn't have to plow through its entirety word for word to absorb the impression), tends to substantiate the title of my article today. When I entered that discussion thread and began to type unremarkably anti-Islam and anti-Muslim statements, I soon felt like I had plunged into a thread at the Daily Kos, or at Jon Stewart's website, or the political forum on craigslist.org -- places where rabid Leftists abound, swarm and swoop in on anyone who has the faintest odor of "bigotry", "hate", and "racism".

I invite the reader to browse through that comments field. No need to read every comment, or even most of them; just limit yourself to searching for "hesperado" and keep your eye out for how the Conservative regulars react whenever Muslims are criticized a wee bit too much for their PC MC sensibilities.

(Also take a look at this more recent thread there on Governor Perry where, for example, in response to my mature and reasonable comment, I received no intelligent responses, but did arouse these pro-Perry "conservatives" to react thusly.)

It should be added that I was not utterly alone there in that Kos-like tank of piranha smelling the blood of Islamophobic bigotry: at least one other commenter (one "november1981") did a considerable amount of heavy lifting for the good cause (e.g., his comment substantiating the unremarkable dismay we should have at the sentiments of Aga Khan on display for all to see in an interview, of which Governor Perry and his followers remain unconscionably and obtusely incognizant); while another ("Lauren") seemed at least to have a glimmer of the appropriate dimensions of the problem of Islam and consequently was not quite as knee-jerk as the vast majority there.

P.S.:

I notice that in the ensuing hours since that grotesque display, discussed above, of PC MC Islamophilia in defense of Muslims barely even bothering to dress itself up in asymptotic intelligence, the "Ace of Spades HQ" community ("Ace", his team of co-bloggers, and all their followers) has resumed normal broadcasting -- you know, posting stuff about how bad "liberals" are, continuing to defend the clueless Rick Perry, and taking shots at Obama: i.e., stuff which must prove, evidently, that they are "real Conservatives".

Be careful what you ask for...

In a recent post, I decried the fact that there exists no real vibrant forum for discussion about the Islam issue.

Well, I found one.

But, alas, it's full of defenders of Muslims -- i.e., Conservative Americans who support Republican Governor of Texas Rick Perry.

I found this site (some guy named "Ace of Spades" -- who does he think he is, Andrew Dice Clay....!?) while reading a Jihad Watch article about how some quarters were giving Spencer and Geller grief for being suspicious of Perry (shades of irrational Bush Defenders!).

I've been spending a lot of time tonight weighing in there.

Have a read (search "hesperado" to zero in on my comments).

Dots, and the mental pencil required to connect them

Dot-connection is a two-edged sword (or double-ended pencil, to so speak; though not the double-ended eraser used by David Letterman).

It can be either an unwarranted activity, entailing an unwarranted (or flawed) conclusion; or it can be a pertinent activity, entailing a reasonable conclusion.

The problem for those who think (and are convinced) that they have a fairly definite pattern or picture manifested by a galaxy of dots is that the result never quite succeeds in transcending relative, subjective opinion. John looks at a cluster of dots and sees a dog; Peter looks at the same cluster of dots and sees a rhinoceros; while Audrey looks at the same dots and thinks John and Peter are nuts (or have had one too many whiskey sours) -- there's nothing there but a random collection of dots, she says.

The problem is further complicated by sociological and ideological factors, whereby a trend may develop in society that tends to cause a significant number of individuals to resist certain dot-connections, even when those connections seem to become sufficiently manifest to warrant them -- though, alas, even the most seemingly rational connection of dots may never quite escape the objection of the subjective opinion, which tends to bolster those who resist the connection for additional ideological reasons.

A deeper complication lurks within the general problem: when the dots may seem numerous enough -- and clustered enough -- to some percipients to warrant drawing a pattern of generalization out of them, but nevertheless manifestly represent only a very small minority amongst the matter that constitutes the overall connection being made.

I.e., let's imagine a group consisting of one million members, spread out around the U.S.A.

Let us then say that Peter begins to notice that among that million, individuals here, there and everywhere are going postal and shooting people in public places. Even if the number of such individuals seems like a lot to Peter, and even though they seem to be randomly occurring all over the U.S.A., unless that number is well over 50% of the one million, Western people are going to tend to resist condemning that group and all its members as a whole, because the West has over millennia developed the ethical principle of considering people "innocent until proven guilty" combined with the general principle of avoiding "painting with a broad brush" which would, perforce, tend to force innumerable people presumed innocent into the net of "guilt by association".

These general principles are then further buttressed when the members of a particular group have over time become endowed by the dominant culture with a certain additional ideological favoritism -- to wit: if they are deemed to be an "ethnic" people, then white Westerners will tend to be extra cautious, often to the point of irrational stubbornness, about connecting dots that seem to lead to a generalized condemnation, or to policies that would seem to have the effect, or would seem to presume, such a generalized condemnation.

Such is the problem which Muslims, motivated by their Islam, are causing the West -- and which Westerners, in their stubborn myopia to that problem, are effectively enabling.

For, in the face of the seas, the oceans, and the mountains (or veritable mountain ranges) of damning data about Muslims, most Westerners for one reason or another continue to lack the mental pencil -- or refuse to use the one they already have, though lain unsharpened -- to connect the dots.

(Thanks to Hugh Fitzgerald for the neat metaphor.) 

Another apposite metaphor comes from Frank Gaffney, who has spoken of the need to develop a "connective tissue" by which to contextualize the dots of damning data about Islam which we already have in copious and multifarious -- though, alas, rather disorganized -- abundance.  A connective tissue, of course, would not presume to supply the missing matter, so to speak, revealing the contiguity among and between all the dots; for then we would no longer be compelled to speak of dots anymore and would have graduated to a reportage of the more evident reality of which dots are, logically, the only available evidence -- though such a useful metaphor when applied precisely suggests that implied reality, and "fleshes it out", by reasonable inference.  

Needless to say, the development of a connective tissue in this regard would optimally require an Anti-Islam Manual; a project which, unfortunately, no luminary in the Counter-Jihad seems to care to support as the urgent priority it remains.

A funny thing happened on the way to "Hesperado's Fourth Law"...

I got bogged down by too much information.

The problem is, there are so many interlocking parts to the particular dynamic of this fourth law, the formulation quickly becomes encumbered, and threatens to morph into an elaborately lengthy paragraph (if not a whole damned blog essay).

My fourth "law" has to do not with Muslims, per se (as did my first three laws -- see the previous three essays immediately below this one), but rather with the Westerners who enable Muslims.

Specifically, politically correct multi-culturalist Westerners (PC MCs) who, unfortunately, seem to be the mainstream majority throughout the West.

With this fourth law, as I said, I am having difficulty following one important general rule for formulating such "laws" -- keeping the formulation short and sweet.

So, at this point, I will merely adumbrate all the interlocking parts and put them on the table, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and invite the reader to go through this thought experiment with me, to see if we can't devise a concise formulation of a "law" that best captures the phenomenon.

At the end of the day, I may have to subdivide this fourth law into multiple laws; but I'd rather try to avoid that.

I hope I needn't remind my reader that this is no mere abstract intellectual exercise, but concerns a phenomenon that is enabling the revival of the worst enemy which the West, and which modern human rights, have ever had.

Pieces of the Puzzle:

a) PC MC is not synonymous with Leftism: it is a much broader sociocultural phenomenon, including in its orbit innumerable conservatives, centrists, and that more amorphous category of vaguely apolitical individuals.

b) Leftism is less significant than PC MC: Leftism is a comparatively small piece in this puzzle -- much smaller demographically than PC MC. While Leftism may perhaps be persuasively argued to be more significant ideologically in this regard, the logic of our puzzle leads us swiftly to the next piece:

c) The significance of Leftism as a part of the puzzle would be relatively inert, without the added help of PC MC: Whatever ideological significance Leftism has, and therefore whatever role it plays in the problem of Western myopia to, and continued enablement of, the problem of Islam, all of this would be a comparatively insignificant problem, if Western society at large had not become reconfigured over the past half century into a dominant and mainstream worldview of PC MC.

d) Leftists are a tiny minority in the West. I.e., the kind of Leftists who are purported to be literal traitors -- who literally hate the West (as opposed to hyperbolically and paradoxically and hypocritically and parasitically "bite the hand that feeds them") -- are a tiny minority in the West, because:

e) The modern West is relatively the healthiest collection of democratic polities in the history of Mankind.

f) Healthy democratic polities are not secretly controlled by cabals of evil people behind the scenes. Unhealthy ones, deeply deformed throughout their sociopolitical institutions and culture by Gnosticism, on the other hand -- like Hitler's Germany, or Stalin's Russia, or Mao's China -- are. The modern West, for all its faults, is not in the same category as the aforementioned diseased entities that flared up in recent history. To imply that it is qualitatively contiguous with them is to begin to succumb to that same disease of Gnosticism.

g) The vast majority of Westerners are not sheep: In a healthy collection of polities such as the modern West, the people of the non-Leftist majority (i.e., conservatives, centrists, and the amorphous category of vaguely apolitical people) are not sheep who allow a tiny minority of radical Leftists to tell them what to think and how to feel.

h) The vast majority of Westerners are not stupid -- at least, not that stupid. In fact, most educated academics, for example, are PC MC about Islam; so obviously, mere intelligence is not the crucial factor here. A more complex intellectual/psychological/cultural phenomenon is going on here, which I have in a previous analysis dubbed Quantum Ignorance which (as I say in that essay) may also be termed, paradoxically, "intelligent stupidity".

i) The vast majority of PC MCs are relatively good, decent, intelligent people. Thus, just as we must rule out sheep-like passivity on a mass scale, and simplistic stupidity, so we must rule out evil: evil cannot be a motivating factor for why the vast majority of Westerners continue to defend Islam and Muslims.

Put that all together -- (a) through (i) -- and then try to explain why the modern West persists in whitewashing and enabling Islam and Muslims. But I have put great effort over the years in lengthy, detailed analyses on this blog trying to do just that, and I've pretty much exhausted this very complex topic.

More pertinent to today's effort is: how to put all that together -- (a) through (i)-- into one pithy formulation.

I'll put on another pot of coffee.

Hesperado's Third Law

I'm getting better at this -- better at making these "laws" more concise.

This one I've been saying for years, but it's an important part of the equation, of which these "laws" are crucial elements. Again, the pithy formulation is followed by an explanatory elaboration.

Here goes.

Hesperado's Third Law:

Given what we know about Islam, we cannot sufficiently tell the difference between the ostensibly harmless Muslims and the dangerous Muslims -- and therefore we must assume all Muslims are equally dangerous.

The explanatory elaboration would be:

Given what we know (or should know, by now) about Islam, we cannot discern, with an adequate margin of error, the difference between the putatively harmless Muslims (even granted that they exist in great numbers) and the actually or potentially dangerous Muslims -- and therefore, in order to protect our societies from the horrific consequences which the latter can cause us, we must treat all Muslims as equally dangerous.

(For my first two "laws", scroll immediately downward from here.)

(Note: Zenster in a comment on this "law" in its posting on the 1389 Counterjihad blog reminded me of the inadequacy of the formulation as I had it, where I had no "ostensibly" modifying the "harmless Muslims" -- so I inserted it here just now, as well as on the 1389 Counterjihad blog. Here, that nuance is adequately brought out in the "explanatory elaboration" which, for brevity's sake, I had not included in my version on the 1389 Counterjihad blog.)

Hesperado's Second Law

Following my first "law" (see my posting immediately below), I now unveil my second "law". One rule for such "laws" is that they be formulated as concisely as possible. I will do so, then follow up with an explanatory elaboration:

Hesperado's Second Law:

Any Muslim who defends Islam as non-violent and as harmonious with modern Western human rights is either a) lying, or b) seriously delusional. There is no third alternative.

The elaboration of the above "law" is as follows:

Given what anyone of elementary intelligence and responsible diligence knows (or should know, by now) about Islam -- its essential and massive evil contextualized by its paradigmatic militarism and expansionism against all others, all evident in the sayings and actions of its founder, Muhammad, along with the teachings of its core texts and tenets, its history, and the behavior and speech and writings of innumerable Muslims all around the world in our time following the aforementioned -- any Muslim who continues to defend Islam as good, supportive of modern human rights, non-militaristic and non-expansionist, either a) is trying to deceive us, or b) is seriously delusional. There is no third explanation for such a stance of defending Islam. The logical conclusion of this law is that, therefore, we cannot trust any given Muslim, no matter how sweet the nothings he or she whispers in our ear -- for any given Muslim will be either a stealth jihadist or, at best, mentally and emotionally deficient and unstable.

As for the non-Muslim PC MCs who continue to defend Islam, that is a more complex subject about which I have written at great length, and which will be the subject of a third "law" coming soon.

Note:

There is the special case of the non-Muslim Westerner who converts, as an adult, to Islam. Such converts are either Gnostic Leftists who hate the West, or are garden-variety PC MCs -- which (unfortunately) constitute probably the majoriy in the West. Most Western non-Muslim PC MCs, however, persist in their "intelligent stupidity" about this by virtue of the fact that they largely don't bother to research the subject, and simply follow the givens and axioms of the paradigm of PC MC without really thinking about them, or about the data concerning Islam and Muslims.

A Westerner who converts to Islam, on the other hand, doesn't have that excuse, for he is choosing a path by which he is ipso facto deepening and broadening his acquaintence with the data of Islam and Muslims. Nevertheless, initially, as long as he is not a West-hating Leftist, he may be given a "grace period", so to speak, during which we do not impute anything especially more damning of him than we do normally of any non-Muslim PC MCs. I.e., such converts may well have gravitated toward Islam by virtue of the variety of unremarkable assumptions about Islam which their own Western PC MC inculcates: it's a wonderful, "diverse", "interesting" and "uniquely spiritual" religious tradition -- just another "world religion" perfectly harmonious, of course, with the other two "Abrahamic faiths" (Judaism and Christitanity), with the added spice of a marvelous "tapestry" of ethnic "cultures" which, needless to say, must always -- on pain of being branded a "bigot" or a "racist" -- be admired and embraced and accepted and never criticized much less condemned for anything they inculcate.

After that "grace period" during which we do not especially blame the recent convert for his stupidity, however, his persistence in admiring and defending Islam becomes suspect, for the more one knows about Islam, the less will one wish to defend it -- if one is a good, decent person who supports modern human rights, that is. I don't know for sure where to situate this "Muslim Unicorn" (see my preceding essay, immediately below here); but all indications suggest that he (like the convert "Tom Haidon" -- again, cf. supra) has been a Muslim long enough, and has had the time and motivation to learn about Islam and Muslims long enough, to have long passed his "grace period".

Further Reading:

For further amplification, see my previous essay on my first "law" (immediately below.

Hesperado's Law

My "law" is, half facetiously, modeled after the famous "Murphy's Law" -- "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."

It could also be modeled, I suppose, after the law of diminishing returns, or the law of thermodynamics; for there is an inexorable, almost mechanical quality to the phenomenon it describes -- namely, the problem of Mohammedan reform.

I say "mechanical" because Islam, and the culture it inculcates, with its obsessive-compulsive monomania imposed from without and dutifully sought from within, resembles more the robotics of a cult or a totalitarian system than it does a relatively free society of human beings out in the air and sunshine of imperfect, messy, real life, with all its headaches and joys -- and, in between, simple pleasures -- where most Earthlings (particularly in the West, for all our repeatedly reminded faults) move and live.

The oft-cited "diversity" of Islam is more a superficial array of spices trying to dress up, distract and make palatable a purulent and toxic corpse of a meal, whose underlying abhorrent taste and poison becomes thus masked for those who have drunk the kool-ade -- whether Muslims themselves or our Western idiots who persist in seeing Islam as benign.

The rudiments of the idea of my "law" have been bouncing around in the back of my head for years, but only recently did I think of it in clearer terms. It was occasioned by a recent tentative exchange I've been having with a self-affected Moderate Muslim: that odd category and strange animal which someone once -- I believe it was some commenter years ago at Jihad Watch (it even could have been me!) -- termed a "Muslim unicorn". That, in fact, is the name of this particular Muslim's blog -- The Muslim Unicorn -- and the sobriquet he goes by. He may have adopted this title and name in the spirit of a tongue-in-cheek self-deprecation, which in turn may or may not reflect a self-awareness of his relative singularity (if, that is, he's being sincere) amid the diseased mass of his new brothers and sisters whose diseased organization he has apparently chosen to join.

Those of us in the still inchoate Anti-Islam Movement know this type of Muslim well. The gold standard, so to speak, of this type became famous at least within the confines of the Blogosphere, during a span of some four years (roughly between 2004 and 2008) of lengthy arguments in innumerable Jihad Watch as well as Front Page comments fields. Simply do a Google search (choosing "advanced" and specifying the Jihad Watch or the Front Page site as the domain to be searched) for the name "Tom Haidon". One example (of which there were many) is this lively discussion of Haidon (with Haidon himself in the mix), from January of 2007. Under the moniker "remote control", by the way, the reader will be able to see in that lengthy exchange -- moi.

At any rate, concerning the possibility of Mohammedan reform in any meaningful sense -- i.e., in a sense that would have an adequate effect on sufficiently minimizing the dreadful, disastrous, demonic problems which Muslim are causing all over the world -- here's Hesperado's Law:

The more sincere a given Muslim seems to be in wishing to practice a kinder, gentler Islam, the more marginal -- and thus ineffective and irrelevant -- he becomes.

The self-proclaimed Moderate Muslim can try to argue until he's blue in the face that his wishing upon a star has hope for real results -- but the behavior and attitude of millions of Muslims (as well as the passivity of millions more in their failure to put down the extremists among them), and the texts and tenets officially encoded and cultivated in Islam for centuries and right into the hot present, indicate massively otherwise. It's self-delusional magical thinking at best; taqiyya at worst.

P.S.:

Hesperado's Second Law

Hesperado's Third Law

Hesperado's Fourth Law

A pointer for Robert Spencer and anyone else when debating Muslims: One point at a time.

Robert Spencer's recent debate with Moustafa Zayed on women in Islam illustrates one seemingly minor -- but I would argue crucial -- problem when those in the A.I.M. (the anti-Islam movement) debate Muslims: Too often (if not, in fact, virtually every time), we let the Muslim exploit the multiplicity of points that inevitably crop up in any debate, in order to generate obfuscation of any (and every) single point we might score.

In the above mentioned debate, the Islam apologist Zayed comes to the table with the broad claim that Islam supports, and encourages, equality of men and women. The moderator lets him go first, and of course, for a few minutes he lays it on thick with the usual slatherings of slick taqiyya. When it's Spencer's turn to rebut, Spencer begins well --but then makes a critically flawed move. Instead of sticking to his first point, he immediately begins to clutter his own presentation with a multitude of points, which then, predictably, Zayed uses to go off on tangents and generate obfuscation, which lasts throughout the debate, ultimately creating more smoke and fire than the clarity of light.

What Spencer should have done was the following:

1) For starters, only make his trenchant first point: namely, that the crucial passage of the Koran on this issue (4:34) begins by saying that "Men are superior to women..."

then

2) point out that this obviously and logically excludes "equality of men and women"

then

3) challenge Zayed to address this logical contradiction.

At that point, STOP. Pass the ball to Zayed -- and when Zayed proceeds to try to blow smoke up everyone's ass, and spends all his allotted time not answering the simple question, Spencer with his intellectual acuity can easily catch Zayed trying to tap-dance around the contradiction. When it's Spencer's turn again, he should not address any of the tangential or unrelated points Zayed blew into the room with his smoke-machine; but rather, like a tenacious terrier, Spencer should stick to the original point that Zayed has not answered. And Spencer should not let go of Zayed's pant leg on this, but persist in pressing the issue until it becomes clear that Zayed is trying to avoid the challenge, or until Zayed concedes that in fact, the Koran teaches the opposite of "equality" of men and women.

This may well take several turns, back and forth, to play out; and Spencer will have to sacrifice any other points he may wish to raise. But, as I argue in an earlier essay I wrote on this subject (linked below), it will be better as a spectacle for the audience of the debate to see a Muslim like Zayed fail miserably in answering a simple -- and important -- question, rather than to see a debate devolve (if not degenerate) into an overly complicated obfuscation of a variety of points, counterpoints, subpoints, and counter-subpoints, none of them resolved to satisfaction.

It would be more educational for the audience to see Zayed transparently tap-dance -- and the best way to do that is to let him, and positively encourage him to, tap-dance alone. The way it played out in this debate, however (as it has in countless other such debates), is that Spencer proceeded to dance with Zayed on the stage, and to huff and puff and tussle and grapple with him on this, that and the other point and sub-point -- which in turn tended to obscure the mendacious desperation of Zayed, and to deflect the spotlight that should have been trained on him, and him alone.

For a more detailed analysis of this strategy, see my earlier essay:

One point at a time: a proposal for future debates with Islam apologists

I got banned by the "SciForums.org" discussion forum for "racism"

For background on the "SciForums.org" discussion forum and its irrationally PC MC (if that's not a redundancy) atmospherics and policy, see my previous posts:

A Proposal: A Formal Anti-Islam Discussion Forum

Update on the "warning" I received from a non-anti-Islam discussion forum about my "bigotry"

Now for the recent juicy stuff.

On a comments thread concerning the recent London riots, a rare soul who seemed to be actually un-PC MC posted a comment in which he pointed out to the majority idiots there that a Muslim who was apparently hit (or run over) by a car during the protracted kerfuffles there was not the victim of an evil White Western driver: actually, the driver was a black man.

Being a member there for over a month or so (having garnered about 150+ comments in that time), I posted a comment myself: I quoted the above post -- which was this:

The BBC has just confirmed that the man charged with driving his car at a group of men protecting commercial property during the disturbances in Birmingham, *killing three of them*, was a BLACK MAN.
Ah well, no doubt there will turn out to be mitigating circumstances! :confused:
---End Quote---
What!!?? A black man killing Muslims!!??

-- then I typed my comment:

The white Western PC MCs (Politically Correct Multi-Culturalists) will start to smoke from their ears, bubble and froth, then implode from the impossible contradiction which this fact's effect will have upon their internal wiring.

I then received an admonitory email from the authorities at the discussion forum, which read as follows:

The post you responded to had no aim but to stir up racial hatred.

And here you are fanning the flames.

This kind of thing will not be accepted on sciforums.
-------

This infraction is worth 1 point(s) and may result in restricted access until it expires. Serious infractions will never expire.

Clarification:

1) First of all, they have no way of knowing with certainty that the original post to which I commented "had no aim but to stir up racial hatred". That poster could well have had the same aim I had -- namely, to expose (with actual data) and mock the PC MC idiocy of that discussion forum.

2) Secondly, I was not "fanning the flames" -- I was exposing and mocking the PC MC idiocy of that discussion forum -- which idiocy includes its central dogma of an Anti-"Racism" run irrationally amok.

I would add that this kind of forum is run, and participated in, by a variety of people -- not merely "Leftists" (and most certainly not "Elites").

I.e., SciForums.org demonstrates the disease of PC MC which runs far more deeply and broadly -- socioculturally -- than the usual bogeymen which most people in the Anti-Islam Movement seem to think is the problem.

As I have been trying to hammer home for years now, PC MCs run the gamut from Left to Right to all the "Centrist" points in between, as well as Upper and Lower Class and everywhere in between those quaintly archaic poles which most people in the Anti-Islam Movement seem to think characterizes Western societies: "Elites" and "Ordinary People".

I. fucking e.:

The people who volunteer to administer discussion forums like SciForums.org (which I distinguish from singularly radical sites like "Kos" -- which is thus the exception that proves the rule), and the hundreds of people from around the world who participate there, are not all "Leftists" (much less are they dastardly "Elites") -- they are part of the Ordinary People of which we, in the Anti-Islam Movement, are part. We are not some Gnostic Remnant different from the idiots who surround us in the West who continue to reflexively defend Islam and Muslims. We are cut from the same cloth. Until we get that clear, we will have no way of cogently distinguishing ourselves from Breivik. Capisce?

At any who: The pièce de résistance of those irrational buggers and snits at SciForums.org revealed itself when I tried to log on there, and got this Orwellian fascist message:

You have been banned for the following reason:

racism

Date the ban will be lifted: 08-15-11, 05:00 AM

Afterthought:

No; on second thought: "Orwellian" is giving those bloody dunderpates too much credit.

Voegelinians and Islam

I expect to publish a few postings on this general topic over time.

"Voegelinians" are students and admirers of the philosopher Eric Voegelin (1901-1985), a philosopher generally deemed to be "conservative" -- earning that label probably mostly because he tended to write favorably about Christianity, and because he considered Communism to be a pneumopathology (a term he coined for "a disease of the spirit"). Most Voegelinians are academic -- either grad students, alumni, or professors -- and form a rather quaintly modest and unassuming collection of devotees. Most of them, in my experience, would be labeled by the Western public at large as "conservative" if not "right wing".

Eric Voegelin, by the way, is my favorite philosopher, and has been for some 25 years (a good sampling of his writings may be perused at this collection of essays of his, available online for free at Google books). I discovered him, and devoured his writings, during those halcyon years before the hideous danger of Islam came on my radar. Ah, to be blessed with the general amnesia about the problem of Islam which most of my fellow Westerners continue to enjoy!

At any rate, back to present reality.

I joined the official discussion forum (since retired) dedicated to the thought and writings of Voegelin in about 2000, and remained there for about two years -- until I was unceremoniously expelled by its owner for disrespecting guess whom. You got it: a Muslim member of the group.

It was not long after 911 (perhaps as late as the middle of 2002) when I was given the boot, during which the topic of Islam got heated on the front burner. A few months after that, I cheated: I re-joined under another pseudonym and studiously tried to skirt writing comments too frontally critical of Islam -- though I did manage to wedge in apposite observations (as the reader will see from the example I provide at the end of today's essay). I managed to stick around for quite some time, until 2004 or 2005, which wasn't long before the forum was retired by its owner anyway.

Anywho, as I said up top, I hope to post several bits and pieces from my time there that reflect on the broader, deeper problem of PC MC -- namely, in this case, how it is that mostly "conservative" philosophers and academics can be so bloody stupid about the problem of Islam, as I found the Voegelinians to be during my time on that forum.

I also hope, more ambitiously, to read and review two recent books crucially pertinent to the nexus between Voegelinianism and the problem of Islam written by two Voegelinian luminaries -- Barry Cooper, and Eugene Webb (the former's book being New Political Religions, Or an Analysis of Modern Terrorism; the latter's being Worldview and mind: religious thought and psychological development). Both books I dare say will not surprise me by being imbued with, and structured by, the givens and axioms and spastic reflexes of the PC MC paradigm with regard to the problem of Islam. (Indeed, I just this moment had to swallow a reflux of a dry heave of nausea after spotting this phrase from Cooper's book, on page 74, which I breezed over: "...although Islam broadly considered does not provide a threat to Western liberal democracy, militant jihadist Islam, what we have been calling Islamism, most certainly does." But, as I said, more about that at some future date.)

At any rate, today's entry is a comment I posted on that forum in 2004, which concerned a thread titled "visceral hatred of the West & the divine Nous". The "Prof. Wagner" to whom I am responding, by the by, was the owner of the forum, a student and personal friend of Voegelin, a conservative on most issues -- and the one who took such wounded offense at my disrespect of his Muslim colleague that he expelled me from the forum.

Anyway, here's my comment (note the passage I bolded, toward the end):

Prof. Wagner wrote:

"Surely the Muslim visceral hatred of the West and especially the
US is based in some large part on a perception of the threat to
their culture from our western reductionism of human sexuality to
the level of smarmy selfishness—all to the detriment of women,
children, elders and future generations."

This visceral hatred was shown to be about more than reductionism of
sexuality in Holland recently, when the Muslim who murdered the Dutch
film-maker Theo Van Gogh, after shooting him a few times and then
slitting his throat in broad daylight on the street, pinned a long
pneumopathological letter up under his ribs with a knife. A Dutch
friend has translated the letter for me, which was recently published
by the Minister of Justice. The letter was addressed not to the
slain Van Gogh, nor to the Dutch people or government (at least not
directly), but to a woman named Ayaan Hirsi Ali. [I must amend that last statement: I believe the assassin's infamous letter did address not only Ms. Ali, but also the Mayor of Amsterdam, among others.]

Ms. Ali is a black African from Somalia who immigrated to Holland many years ago. She is a professed "ex-Muslim" who has worked for years helping Muslim women she claims are being abused, physically and otherwise, by their Muslim husbands, brothers and fathers. She has taken her cause into the political arena, first by joining the more left-leaning Labour Party, then -- when they seemed more concerned to protect the virtue of multi-culturalism than the more concrete human rights of Muslim women -- switching to the more conservative Conservative VD Party. More recently, she collaborated with the slain Van Gogh by writing the text to his latest film in which Muslim women talk about their abuse.

The bloody letter to Ms. Ali lists, at great rambling length, her various sins (including her supposedly unwitting allegiance to a political system controlled by "Jews"), along with various threats not only to Ms. Ali herself but specifically to the "Netherlands", to "Europe" and to "America" (including apocalyptic language resembling the Apocalypse of John and other classical apocalyptic literature, here with Arabic flavors, scil.,

"On that momentous day
FEAR will fill the atmosphere:
When the sun is closed down
And when the stars fall down
And when the mountains are moved
And when the pregnant camels are left behind."... etc.).

Among the sins of Ms. Ali listed by the letter was one that caught my eye: "Thus you had the cowardice to ask Islamic children at school to make a choice between their Creator and the constitution."
This aroused a question in me: Which pneumopathology is more unhealthy and dangerous for civilization,

a) the pneumopathology that would marginalize or even exclude
discussion of the divine Nous in the public spheres of education,
information and politics;

or

b) the pneumopathology that is so anxious for the divine Nous to be
dominant in the public spheres that it slaughters an innocent person
like a pig in broad daylight on the street?

The fact that I feel compelled to ask this question at all generally of the more "conservative" Voegelinians here tinges me with frustration; the fact that I can guess the convoluted answer from the more anti-American Voegelinians here fills me with annoyance, rancour and sadness.

(Nota bene: while Van Gogh's film that so outraged the Muslim community in Holland not only included Muslim women talking about the abuse they experience in their culture but also depicted their naked breasts artfully overlaid with verses from the Koran, this degree of sexual libertinism which has, at least since the 1960s if not further back, become so much a part of modern Western art and culture as to have become unremarkably banal to most Western Christians, is not once mentioned in the terrorist letter, though doubtlessly it was one contributing factor to the 'visceral hatred' of the seven Muslims arrested for this twisted abomination.)

For Part 2, see:

Voegelinians and Islam, Part 2

Second update on Professor "Yahya"

Unfortunately, it looks like I will never be able to acquire smoking gun evidence demonstrating that Professor Jean "Yahya" Michot (a Belgian Catholic expert on Islam and Arabic who many years ago converted to Islam) actually supports the fatwa (scholarly ruling) of Ibn Taymiyya (a prominent Islamic scholar from the 14th century) which he translated back in 1997 in the aftermath of the massacre of a group of Catholic monks in Algeria in 1996 -- the fatwa in question being the argument that it is justified to kill Christians (and/or Jews) in a Muslim land when those Christians or Jews are deemed to be causing "disorder in the land".

In the case of the monks of Tibhirine, Algeria, the "disorder in the land" they were causing consisted of doing things like helping the local Muslim villagers with food, occasional lodging, various favors, and medical treatment (one of the monks was a physician). After a while, they even graciously opened up a wing of their monastery for local Muslims to use as a substitute mosque for their daily prayers. Also, of course, the mere fact that these Catholic monks were kind, decent, generous Christians by itself constituted a threat to Islam -- for it might tempt some Muslims to consider the possibility that Christians are not, as their Koran and Sunna and five daily prayers incessantly remind them, their enemies for all time until the Day of Judgment.

The reason I say I may never be able to get the skinny on Yahya is that I recently had a most interesting communication (a long phone call lasting nearly an hour) with someone I will not name but who -- the reader will have to trust me on this -- knows the situation well (see my previous essay on this, Of scholars and massacres, to glean what that situation involves): the conversation was interesting and productive on many aspects of the situation and on Islam more generally; but, again, unfortunately, the conclusion was that apparently Professor Michot is too clever to ever come out and say he supports that massacre of monks. One would have to infer it. And such an inference is eminently reasonable, given the fact that such a fatwa is solidly ensconced in mainstream orthodox Islam and that Professor Michot is a mainstream orthodox Muslim (and a most learned one to boot). But, alas, it is an inference not sufficiently juicy to persuade the average PC MC, who needs a blunt hammer blow of massively frontal evidence to the forehead in order to get through his obtuse skull.

There is also the pregnant question to be answered: Why did Professor Michot go to the trouble of translating that Ibn Taymiyya fatwa in the immediate aftermath of the Tibhirine massacre? What was the point? An article I found online -- A Strange Professor at Leuven -- written in 1997, may provide a clue (if not an actual answer) at least to that question (for Prof. Michot was a faculty member at Leuven in Belgium at the time). Soon, I will get around to paying $30.00 to access it.

P.S.: I learned recently that "Yahya" is simply Arabic for "John" (or, in Prof. Michot's homeland, Belgium, "Jean").

I cheated

My most recent essay indicated that I was done with the Breivik issue and was going to resume my regular blogging about Islam.

However, I just couldn't resist adding another major piece of damning evidence (in addition to the one I had plucked, out of dozens I could have, from Lawrence Auster's hat) that underscores my points about "Breivik's Law" -- namely, a recent essay by Fjordman showcased on the Gates of Vienna blog emblazoned with the inflammatory title When Treason Becomes the Norm: Why the Proposition Nation, not Islam, is our Enemy.

Good freaking Lord, and Fjordman can't understand why people see an ideological affinity between him and Breivik!? The man is strangely delusional if he can't see it staring at him right under his nose, for crying out loud.

So, I cheated by inserting that Fjordman example as "Exhibit B" (following Auster's "Exhibit A") in that recent posting.

That Fjordman essay, by the way, aroused 157 comments at the time -- quite a lot for Gates of Vienna (back before the Breivikian Ice Age when they froze comments). Some of my comments may interest the reader, as they touch on this issue. They may be found here, here, here, and -- before Baron Bodissey, owner of the blog, closed comments because he didn't like the way they were going -- most especially here and here.

At any rate, as I said, I inserted additional analysis about this in my penultimate essay, "Breivik's Law" in action, here below before my most recent essay.