EDIT: This is my final response to Arizona Atheist. There is little point in this discussion continuing since we seem to keep talking past each other. Moreover, AA has a particularly nasty habit of assigning the most debased motives to me in lieu of actually dealing with what I write:
I’d like to begin by stating that I can understand where The Prussian is coming from. As it so happens, I’m very good at seeing things from other vantage points
It is generally a good rule of thumb that if you have to say something like that, you probably aren’t. What runs through his post is not understanding but projection – his assumption that the Middle Eastern Muslims think the way he does gels nicely with his putting positions in my mouth. This is proved some paragraphs later:
The Coulter quote, with the exception of forced conversion to Christianity, is eerily similar to The Prussian’s statement above
Presumably comparing me to Ann Coulter is supposed to make me shrivel like a salted slug. How many times to I need to repeat that I don’t care about the internal squabbles of the US – I care only about what that means for the broader world, because that is where I live? I did not know that Coulter was known for advocating internationalism and solidarity with the oppressed – but if she does, more power to her.
Now what I have maintained for a long time is that a sane policy on Islam means standing shoulder to shoulder with those equally threatened. It means supporting those fighting Al Shabab in Kenya and Boko Haram in Nigeria. Now, my case has always been that the diplomacy advocated by AA means betraying our friends and throwing them to the wolves. His response?
I in no way advocate allowing people to needlessly harm others
Sorry, but you do. You may not think that you are advocating this, but that is the practical effect. I repeat: look at Kerry urging people to lay off Boko Haram and see how well that went. Look at the failure to do anything about the Janjaweed and see how well that went. Look and the endless indulgence of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and see how well that is working out for anyone.
Al-Shabab is pledging rivers of blood in Kenya. Now, are you in favour of siding with the Kenyans against al-Shabab, in favour of siding with al-Shabab against the Kenyans, or just looking the other way? I would really like an answer to that.
AA goes on to defend his exclusive focus on the US, because of the US’s powerful military reach and involvement. Now if we want to have a discussion about the morality of US policy, bring it on. That is fine, and I think AA might be surprised how much we have in common – e.g. I regard the CIA as a truly disgraceful institution that needs to be abolished and replaced.
But do not dare to pretend that this has anything to do with the Jihad. That is an insult to all those countless victims who are not Americans and have nothing to do with American policy.
Do you know why I write under a pseudonym? Because – right in the middle of Europe – to write the way I do can mean the threat of jail and death. Death for exercising my fundamental liberty. Via my colleague at No Cross, No Crescent, I learn that that liberty should also be sacrificed in the name of appeasement.
Yet why should my minor troubles be of importance? What is that compared to the slaughter of two million Christians and Animists in the Sudan, the killing of almost a third of the population of East Timor, the pain of every single slave who is kept under the lash of the Koran?
Don’t you dare claim that this is all about you. Don’t think to call this ‘retribution’. Don’t even try it.
Following my citation of that Imam, AA continues:
If, as he says, his argument was essentially to cite this single individual, from an obscure interview, to somehow “prove” that Arab hostility towards Israel is not due to their treatment of the Palestinians, I do not know what to say to such myopia. Finding one obscure interview doesn’t automatically wipe out the years and years of quotes one could cite, showing that Arab emotions are highly charged due to how the state of Israel treats the Palestinians.
Bias declared: I don’t care about the Palestinians. Why should I? I have far too much on my hands when it comes to trying to find solidarity with the tens of millions of infidels who are always forgotten in this. Why should I care about a people that celebrates suicide-murder, wires their children up with bombs, praises Adolf Hitler and is considered such a menace by even the rest of the region that the Egyptians maintain a big wall to keep them out? Why on earth should I side with such people against our civilizational cousins? Take a look at some of the contributions of this state.
However, AA’s attempt to portray this Imam as a lone figure are not even slightly justified. Here is The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism. You can stand on it to paint the ceiling. Here are Bat Ye’or’s works on dhimmitude. Want to learn a bit more in advance? Here is the wiki on the subject. Here is another. Here is a compilation of anti-Semitism throughout the Middle Eastern media.
I have a distinct feeling that AA has not watched those documentaries I linked to last time. Perhaps he might be willing to do so and then explain why Mein Kampf is a bestseller in the Palestinian territories and now on the streets of London? Could he, perhaps, tell me why Jews in France and Sweden are now in fear? Could you explain to me why the President of Israel has to explain to the assembled United Nations that the Holocaust did, in fact, happen? In fact, if you type in “Islamic antisemitism”, you get about four million hits.
But here it all is in one simple image:
Even if I could be brought to turn my back onto our civilizational cousins in India, in Africa, in Asia, even if there were not a growing threat to my freedoms here in Europe – this image would be the clincher for me. We’ve been here before, we know where this leads. An American might turn his back, but no true son of the Fatherland has that luxury. We have to stand against it this time around.
AA continues:
Finally, I should note that his alleged anti-Semitic views may not even be due to actual anti-Semitism. It may be he was simply lashing out in anger at Jews, saying whatever insults came to mind, due to his feelings about the Palestinian issue.
This is just contemptible – “the Jews bring it on themselves”. Yes, we’ve heard that before, also. Yes, because of the Palestinians, it’s perfectly okay to go out and beat up Jewish schoolkids. Why hadn’t I thought of that before?
Care to tell the Danish Jew Moran Jacob that?
In eighth grade, his teacher told him to say that he was Palestinian and that his mother was Russian. “I had to lie about who I was,” he recalls. But it didn’t work. They knew. Eventually, a group of his classmates ganged up on him and stabbed him in the leg. “You can’t go here anymore,” his teacher said. “I have scars,” he told the hearing. “Not on my body, but on my soul…”
“Jews have learned to keep a low profile,” Max Mayer, president of the Danish Zionist Federation, told the hearing. “To not exist in the city…” And they teach their sons to do the same: wear the skullcap at school, but take it off when you leave. This, Mayer said, has become standard practice for Danish Jews: “Don’t see us, don’t notice us.”
“Jews have learned to keep a low profile” – this is what we should accept? In the twenty-first century, this is what we should tolerate? This should bring us to “diplomacy” and “dialogue”?
What AA misses is that the line taken by the New York Imam – let me repeat: this isn’t some whackjob from Saudi Arabia, but right in the middle of the US – is the explicit form antisemitism takes. He is not complaining about this or that policy, he is paining the Jew as a supernatural being who is the source of all evil. That is antisemitism defined (Nick Cohen is very good on this. Even Mehdi Hassan admits it.)
He also avoids the point that our New York chum doesn’t just charge Jews with backing Israel, but with spreading homosexuality and licentiousness. My original point was that, if you want to give in to the demands of the Jihadis, what on earth makes you think you’ll get to stop with the geopolitical ones? The Jews and the gays are already fleeing Europe (yes I think we’ve seen that before too). It is an abject disgrace that this is permitted.
To return to AA’s self definition, what is on display here is not understanding but projection. He is defending those demands by the jihadists that he himself agrees with. Sorry, does not work that way. In quoting bin Laden, he focuses on the late Al Qaeda chief where bin Laden’s demands overlap with the ones you can hear at most center-left US meetings. However, it is worth taking a look at bin Laden’s document “Why we are fighting you?” where he says explicitly what he is after:
What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?
1. The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.
A. The religion of tahwid; of freedom from associating partners with Allah Most High , and rejection of such blasphemy; of complete love for Him, the Exalted; of complete submission to his sharia; and of the discarding of all the opinions, orders, theories, and religions that contradict with the religion He sent down to His Prophet Muhammad. Islam is the religion of all the prophets and makes no distinction between them.
It is to this religion that we call you …
It sounds like he means it. He goes on this vein for quite some time. He then gets specific:
2. The second thing we call you to is to stop your oppression, lies, immorality and debauchery that has spread among you.
A. We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honor and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling and usury.
We call you to all of this that you may be freed from the deceptive lies that you are a great nation, which your leaders spread among you in order to conceal from you the despicable state that you have obtained.
B. It is saddening to tell you that you are the worst civilization witnessed in the history of mankind:
i. You are the nation who, rather than ruling through the sharia of Allah, chooses to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from you policies, contradicting the pure nature that affirms absolute authority to the Lord your Creator….
ii. You are the nation that permits usury…
iii. You are a nation that permits the production, spread, and use of intoxicants. You also permit drugs, and only forbid the trade of them, even though your nation is the largest consumer of them.
iv. You are a nation that permits acts of immorality, and you consider them to be pillars of personal freedom. You have continued to sink down this abyss from level to level until incest has spread among you, in the face of which neither your sense of honor nor your laws object.
Comedy interlude!
Who can forget your President Clinton’s immoral acts committed in the official Oval Office? After that you did not even bring him to account, other than [b y saying] that he “made a mistake,” after which everything passed with no punishment. Is there a worse kind of event for which your name will go down in history and be remembered by nations?
And so on. You get the idea.
So, even if we grant Arizona Atheist’s premise that the United States should give in to the Jihadis demands to get them to lay off, he has still not established why one should only follow the demands that he has selected? Why not go the distance and ban usury, homosexuality, alcohol and the rest? After all, note that bin Laden ranks Clinton’s promiscuity as a worse crime than his rocketing of Khartoum (I don’t think that got a mention). Ergo, if you want to appease this lot, you should start by tackling the big problems of idolatry, usury, homoxesuality, intoxicants, gambling, immodesty and then later address the little things like geopolitics.
My response to all this is that it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference. Notice the words: The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam… That’s not surprising. Every Jihad throughout history has begun with those words. Any infidel could gain automatic indemnity simply by affirming that there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his Prophet. However, it is also a core of Islamic teachings that there is no sin worse than infidelity.
I repeat, there are demands made by the jihadists that appeal to AA. That’s not surprising – but if you read the whole text of their demands, they have a lot that appeal to conservative US Christians as well. Every movement will have some demands you agree with. The National Socialists were right on inflation and mass unemployment, right on the treaty of Versailles, right on Communism and right on roads. The Communists were absolutely correct in their criticism of the Tsar and of Imperial China (not to mention Imperial Japan!), and of the disgusting inter-imperialist war we call the First World War. The AWB in South Africa is right about the appalling danger and criminality. Does not mean that we should like any of them.
Now AA is obsessed with the question of democracy. He writes:
I responded by citing scholarly literature describing Muslim countries that were also democratic and the complex issues involved, given the sometimes fundamentalist views of some Muslims. Of course, despite their highly religious society democratic values still existed. This fact completely refutes his claim that the two cannot co-exist
In actual fact, what I wrote was that, for the strict definition, they might well coexist. However, as Francis Fukuyama writes:
These religions may be compatible with democracy – Islam, in particular, establishes no less than Christianity the principle of universal human equality – but they are very hard to reconcile with liberalism and the recognition of universal rights, particularly freedom of conscience or religion. It is perhaps not surprising that the only liberal democracy in the contemporary Muslim world is Turkey, which was the only country to have stuck with an explicit rejection of its Islamic heritage in favour of a secular society early in the twentieth century.
In my previous post I pointed out that democracy is compatible with oppression and the destruction of liberty. As AA would say, he has ignored these facts once again and restates his original argument. But to those of us getting the international edition of Time, the picture of the world seems to confirm that. In the Egyptian elections, the winner was the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Morsi, closely chased by Aboul Fotouh, a frontman for Al Nour, which has been called the Even More Muslim Brotherhood. Turkey has been getting more democratic and as a consequence, it has been turning more Islamic and less liberal. And so on.
He asks:
The point is at what level of religiosity is Islam anti-democratic and at which level of religiosity are democratic values still upheld, given the very religious nature of the society (ie. how much religious freedom is there, personal freedom, etc.)?
As I point out, single digit percentages of Muslims in Europe have effectively ruled Islam beyond public criticism. That’s the level at which “democratic values” – if by those you mean personal freedom, religious freedom etc. – are undercut.
To quote him once more, he has ignored these facts once again and restates his original argument. So let me repeat my question: Given that Muslim minorities in established liberal democracies have succeeded in eroding liberalism, what are the chances that Muslim majority societies are hotbeds of liberal revolution?
Then there is this:
Violence only begets violence.
Which presumably is why slaves are being sold in Louisiana and the NSDAP is still in power in my Fatherland.
Conclusion
My general impression is that Arizona Atheist lacks a sense of history, and a sense of geopolitical reality. He gives the impression that for him history begins with the US and the world exists no further than the reach of its policy. That the West and Islam have fought for fourteen hundred years seems irrelevant to him. That Islam’s Jihad attacks principally non-Americans appears equally irrelevant. As my old comrade Bill Whittle points out:
Finally, consider this: Muslims are angrily at war with Buddhists in East Asia. Muslims are enraged with Animists in Africa. Of course, none of this approaches the sheer hatred that Muslims bear towards Hindus in the South Asia peninsula. And this foaming hatred blanches compared to the white-hot fury Muslims feel for the Christian American Crusaders. And this fury is but a candle to the incandescent, boiling, supernova of murder they feel toward the Jews.
Does anyone beside me detect a pattern here? You know, my Dad told me once, Bill, if more than three people in your life are utter, total assholes, then maybe it’s you.
Finally, AA seems to be unable to consider anything that cannot be expressed in exclusively American terms – vide his reference to Coulter. There’s a lot more world out there than the US. What is worrying is the question of how far this view has spread in the United States. AA asserts that it is possible to accept the Jihadists demands without abandoning our friends, but he never explains why or how – because it cannot be done. And it is not ‘just’ a betrayal of our fellow infidels, it is a betrayal of those who genuinely want reform. Watch the following:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtPR7xYeIac
Now I know that I am no one’s idea of a man who smoothes over differences easily and finds common ground. I’m cantankerous and there are no two ways about it. Yet, could someone please tell me what is so terrible about what I advocate? I say that the US should lead the West in standing with the victims of Jihad. Sometimes that will be military – I’m glad to see that AA agrees with me on the destruction of the slave trade – but many more times it will be a matter of extending aid to countries like Nigeria and Kenya, of rounding up food and medicine for our fellow Infidels, of doing as little a thing as sending letters so they know they are not alone. Of helping refugees and defending the rights of apostates, of treating Islamic bigots the same way we treat our homegrown racists. It’s a matter of internationalism and it is a matter of solidarity. What is so wrong with that?
He quotes a great deal from the current President of the United States, and from some of the US state department. I have very little time for either of these sources. However, if it is the case that the United States cannot be trusted in this struggle, then Europe will have to rearm and sharpish. A Franco-German alliance with India and Russia, taking, I repeat, the side of the oppressed infidels in Christian Africa might be a good start. After all, it is the Russians who have been defending the Christians of the Middle East, and the French military has dealt the Jihad one of its few resounding defeats, in Mali. And India’s Hindus and Sikhs know a thing or two about this fight.
A speculation for the future, perhaps. AA keeps trying to paint this as an argument between those who want more destruction (me) and those who want less (him). In point of fact, the real argument, as I keep saying, is about those who want to stand with our fellow infidels and to help those who are on the front lines, and those who want to stab them in the back. Given that he has been good enough to defend six of my seven points – including my line on immigration – let me close with the following: it is absolutely natural to want to seek peace rather than war, and it is equally right to hold your country to account when it goes wrong. However, please do not let this blind you to the cause of your fellows – for all those who are not protected by the military might of the US and by the swathes of the Atlantic and Pacific. They need help – what will you do about that?
