{"id":1380,"date":"2014-11-18T20:12:12","date_gmt":"2014-11-18T20:12:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/prussian\/?p=1380"},"modified":"2014-11-22T13:06:57","modified_gmt":"2014-11-22T13:06:57","slug":"why-i-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/prussian\/2014\/11\/18\/why-i-blog\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I blog"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a response to the\u00a0Freethoughtblogs\u00a0<\/em>blogger\u00a0Avicenna, <\/em>who is not particularly happy<\/a> with my ‘invoking’ his name in my open letter<\/a>. \u00a0I don’t particularly blame him for not having much of my stuff, I just wish he’d extend me the same courtesy. \u00a0 That said, nothing in his response makes me reconsider my view of him as producing anything other than standard US lefty boilerplate.<\/p>\n

I know that description wounds him. \u00a0He makes a great deal of his racial background – describing himself as ‘a person of colour’, the importance of being from a Hindu background etc. \u00a0I generally think it is a bad thing to dwell too much on race, since it may lead you to a certain unwarranted confidence<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Case in point, in his reply he accuses me of lacking in a nuanced understanding of Islam, and proceeds to\u00a0inform\u00a0me that the Yazidi of Iraq are Muslims too, and says that Turkey was modernised by ‘Mohammed Attaturk. \u00a0He also makes a few howlers about my own position – for example he declares that the atheist movement is changing because it is ”\u00a0beginning to include more women and more minority atheists.” \u00a0and somehow misses the fact that I cite people like Ibn Warraq, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan etc. \u00a0Of course, that’s not what ‘minority’ or ‘person of colour’ means. \u00a0It means ‘any non-white willing to string along with the platitudes of the US left’. \u00a0Hence the term ‘minority’ – where I grew up, it was whites<\/em> who were the minority.<\/p>\n

(And, yes, it is the US l<\/em>eft. \u00a0Michael Nugent’s point, that the atheist movement is strongly dominated by the US, is extremely valid).<\/p>\n

Avicenna doesn’t really address my points. \u00a0He doesn’t answer why, exactly, I should care about a movement that turns its back on me and mine, nor does he justify or defend the attempts to turf Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Ayaan Hirsi Ali etc. out of the movement – indeed, he seems to argue that that no such attempt is ongoing. \u00a0I can appreciate not wanting to wade through his fellow FtB bloggers, but I assure you, from those of us looking in from outside, that’s clear.<\/p>\n

Nor does he address my point that 1) searching for perfect consistence is a fool’s errand, or 2) \u00a0what applying those standards to his own colleagues would mean. \u00a0He doesn’t even seem to mention any of the morally questionable statements or actions of his side. \u00a0This isn’t double standards – it is an impossible standard for the one, and a complete lack of standards for the other.<\/p>\n

Just to take the following minor example, he writes:<\/p>\n

If Muslims wish to meet in a quiet room at school that isn\u2019t being used and pray during lunch times then that\u2019s fine by me. Muslims have prayers for when they are busy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I rest my case. \u00a0If it was Christians wanting to pray in school, the whole FtB crowd would start shouting from the rooftops that this was unacceptable. \u00a0If the matter is a cheesy shirt worn by a scientist, Avicenna will huff and puff with outrage. \u00a0But Muslims holding prayer in public, taxpayer funded schools, and segregating not just boys from girls, but telling menstruating girls they shouldn’t participate because they are unclean? \u00a0Avicenna is\u00a0fine with that<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

In addressing my argument that Dawkins and Harris do a hell of a lot more for the resistance to Islam and jihad than certain types, he writes:<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t a zero sum game.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It kinda is. \u00a0The people who get all hurt and huffy that Sam Harris botched a joke, say, are also the type that have been at best useless when it comes to facing the menace of Islam and jihad. \u00a0I’m not even going to get into PZ Myers’ infamous scuttling to safety the one time there was a real threat. \u00a0Avicenna protests that he is capable of both defending Muslims and criticising Islam, and to prove it, he links to two blog posts where he defends a year’s jail sentence for the crime of hurting Muslim feelings, and argues that Islam only went bad with the rise of Wahhabism.<\/p>\n

So, in short, his ‘nuanced’ understanding of Islam boils down to the old Tiny Minority Of Extremists argument – that because only a TMOE are actually engaged in killing, the majority of Islam is no problem.<\/p>\n

By this logic, there was never any problem with racism in the US Deep South because only a TMOE actually lynched blacks. \u00a0Come to think of it, there hasn’t been a lynching in the US in forever, so I assume Avicenna will be arguing that racism in the United States is long dead, too?<\/p>\n

That is, in fact, how things really break down. \u00a0In Islam there is a hard core of jihadists, the people who actually go out and kill, analogous to the KKK and the lynchers in the US deep south. \u00a0Around them is a shell\u00a0of totalitarians, those who do not kill but share their aim of enforcing Shariah on everyone. \u00a0Around them is a shell of bigots – those who may not share all the totalitarian impulses, but who still preach hatred and bigotry towards kafirs such as myself. \u00a0These are analogous to the Southern racists. \u00a0Around them is another, still larger shell of whiners – those who don’t necessarily go along with the inner shells, but certainly don’t speak up against murder, totalitarianism and bigotry, but can indeed be counted on to whine and moan whenever an infidel, a kafir, speaks up. \u00a0I’ll leave you to work out the apposite Southern parallel. \u00a0And, finally, around them is a shell of Muslims who are effectively ballast – they don’t speak for or against anything, they just try to live their lives and go along with whatever the line of the day is.<\/p>\n

Set against that is a real TMOE who actually speak up and criticise Islam – people like Maajid Nawaz, Irshad Manji etc.<\/p>\n

How big are these shells? \u00a0I’ll cover it in more detail later, but for the moment please note that every reputable polls finds truly huge numbers of support for murdering apostates etc. \u00a0and the recent finding in ‘The Times’ that something like one in seven young\u00a0Britons<\/em> feels sympathetic to Isis<\/a>. \u00a0Since I think it is safe to say that few infidels have much sympathy there, look at the current British Muslim population percentage, and draw your own conclusions.<\/p>\n

So, yes.<\/p>\n

Of course, I suspect Avicenna would put this under the heading of ‘Orientalist stereotypes’. \u00a0Funny, I have yet to see anyone complain about the endless Occidentalist stereotypes put out by Islam, or, more to the point, it’s kafir-stereotypes. \u00a0And while ‘Orientalist stereotypes’ are apparently damaging in some nonspecified way, I can point to the Islamophillic stereotypes being damaging in a highly specific way. \u00a0It is the whitewashing of Islam – of precisely the kind I was referring to in the original post – that lead to nothing being done about Muslim sex grooming gangs, the spread of the most violent anti-Infidel intolerance, and all the rest of it. \u00a0But more to the point…<\/p>\n

Imagine arguing that you should only judge the US Republican Party by how it is viewed by committed and registered Republicans. \u00a0Everyone can see the problem here. \u00a0Complaints about ‘Orientalist stereotypes’ about Islam are a plea that Islam be only judged by the appraisal by devout Muslims. \u00a0This is why Edward Said was torn apart by Ibn Warraq (whose works I cannot recommend too highly).<\/p>\n

Speaking of Occidentalist stereotypes, Avicenna writes:<\/p>\n

Throughout western history there is an ignorance of \u201cother cultures\u201d and their thinkers and achievements.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In reality, thinkers from Christian Europe actively sought out knowledge about other cultures and other achievements, indeed including writers like Avicenna, Averroes and al-Khwarizmi. \u00a0Adelard of Bath, just to take one example, traveled throughout Asia minor and North Africa, deliberately making translations from the Arabic. \u00a0The prime symbol of this is that Dante placed Avicenna, Averroes and even Saladin among the virtuous pagans, alongside Virgil, Homer and Aristotle. \u00a0That openness and curiosity about other cultures dates right back through Western history, back at least to Plato’s boast that the Greeks invented nothing, but improved everything. \u00a0 I cannot think of a comparably generosity from the Islamic world towards the Infidel – indeed, I can’t think of a single Muslim historian who admits that al-Khwarizmi’s work is effectively based on that of Brahmahupta.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, since he likes to trumpet his ‘Hindu’ background, and FtB bloggers like to throw around the term ‘uncle tom’ for any ‘person of colour’ who doesn’t toe the line, he seems singularly uninterested in the fact that the largest genocide in history – of eighty million people – was of Hindus at the hands of the Muslim imperialists, something that is still going on<\/a>. \u00a0I append no comment.<\/p>\n

And while he hectors me that I should care about whatever the latest whine from the feminist side is and how I don’t get to dismiss it, he takes it on himself to tell Europeans that we shouldn’t get upset about Islam in the continent – that we shouldn’t care about the ongoing ethnic cleansing of jews from our cities<\/a>, or about the attacks on Yazidi<\/a>, or about the spread of rape and grooming… \u00a0Well, nuts to that. \u00a0As I say, if you turn your back on me and mine, I will turn it mine on you.<\/p>\n

To the point then – why I blog. \u00a0I don’t advertise my activities beyond this blog as assiduously as Avicenna does, and there’s a reason for that. \u00a0All I can do with a blog is try to influence the conversation. \u00a0I think it is vitally important that there actually are secular and atheist voices speaking out against Islamic barbarism. \u00a0And by speaking out I\u00a0don’t<\/em> mean the attitude of FtB that they might, conceivably, possibly think about wagging a finger at the more barbaric practices of Islam before returning to pissing and moaning about a scientists shirt<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The reason that this matters is that, in the same way that anyone who is turned off a career in science by a shirt would never have been worth squat anyway, it is perfectly obvious that those reduced to indignant jellies by Sam Harris’ tweets will never be worth\u00a0squat against a real menace. \u00a0What you end up with is this person:<\/p>\n

\"10420147_405996332881071_1787028641803511238_n\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I’ll quote myself at length here<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I doubt the A+ ranks largely are capable of much, but there is one thing that they could do: they could succeed in poisoning the case for atheism. \u00a0In the same way as the modern feminists are poisoning the struggle for women\u2019s rights at the time we need it most, and the identity politics racketeers are poisoning the anti-racist struggle, the A+ may make atheism effectively \u201cunmarketable\u201d.<\/p>\n

This involves a visit to a place the A+ers may have heard of, known as \u201cthe Real World\u201d. \u00a0In that distant realm, religious fanaticism has returned in a terrifying form. \u00a0All across Europe we\u2019re seeing the rehabilitation of the sort of parties we thought we got rid of at Nuremberg. \u00a0Further east, the Russian Orthodox Church is the clerical arm of the Putin autocracy (and there is a significant amount of the opposition to Putin that thinks him just too liberal and bleeding heart), and in India we\u2019ve seen Hindu fascism that may yet give us a nuclear war. \u00a0Overshadowing all of these is the terrible menace of jihad, tens of millions strong, a movement that has notched up three genocides in my lifetime alone, which may soon have nuclear weapons. \u00a0In this background, advocates of Reason will have a stiff fight to have any voice whatsoever.<\/p>\n

Yet the Myers tendency is determined to make this impossible. \u00a0Put yourself in the shoes of a student who listens to Myers rousing call for solidarity, and in consequence decides to stand up to Islamic intimidation. \u00a0And when she is arrested, accused of racism, and threatened with expulsion by her University, she looks to him for solidarity and finds him not merely failing to provide it, but actively piling on \u2013 what view will she likely have of organised atheism?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And here<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I\u2019m occasionally reproached for being \u2018extremist\u2019. \u00a0It\u2019s not that people disagree with what I say, it\u2019s that they think I make my points too hard, and that there needs to be more moderate voices in this. I have news for you:\u00a0I\u2019m the moderate. \u00a0I\u2019m as good as it\u2019ll get.<\/p>\n

On the other side of me there are guys like this and that\u2019s the only alternative you\u2019ll get. \u00a0I assure you, all those \u2018moderate\u2019 voices who fret about \u2018Islamophobia\u2019 \u2013 they will shut up like clams if we ever get to the point where Muslims are being rounded up and taken away to camps. Why do I say that? \u00a0Because that is what happened the last time around. \u00a0Go look at the media record from the Milosevic years. \u00a0You\u2019ll find all the same people who whine that we\u2019re just being too mean to the Taliban (or whatever) were adamant that we should do\u00a0nada about Bosnia. \u00a0You\u2019ll find them taking the same stance over Crimea right now.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a response to the\u00a0Freethoughtblogs\u00a0blogger\u00a0Avicenna, who is not particularly happy with my ‘invoking’ his name in my open letter.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/prussian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/prussian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/prussian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/prussian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/prussian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/prussian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1406,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/prussian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1380\/revisions\/1406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/prussian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/prussian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/prussian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}