The Koran and muslims

Have another cigarette.

Why on earth have you then posted so many times on a thread called the Koran and Muslims?
Some of your comments are approaching outright racism.

Not that expect you to be able to put forth a cogent response, but why do you believe it is racist to oppose terrorism?

Souljacker; I suspect recursion interpreted your comment as being along the lines of:
"Kill them all and let God sort them out." Which of course is exactly what you meant.

Here is a piece by a University of California Professor Victor Davis Hanson

Hanson is a writer for the National Review, an extremely partisan organization. Terrorism is an act perpetuated by individuals. Condemning a society for the presence of a terrorist element within it has been invalidated by every major world government, including our own.
Ireland has the IRA: Ireland evil? Catholics evil?
US has produced Unibomber, Veigh, etc? US evil? Christians evil?
Are there problems with Arabic society? Oh yeah, too numerous to count.
Is it OK to refer to people as dogs? Imply that they are unclean? Imply that they are incapable of higher thought (illiterate sheep?). At one time these same statements, or ones very much like them, were uses to describe Native Americans, Indians, Africans, Women, Chinese, Japanese, and on. The Nazis described jews this way. Make your arguments, but keep your language civil.

what a fantastic article

it succinctly expressed what every rational thinking person would feel, examining the situation in the middle east - but that so many academics, politicians and newspapers shy away from - THE TRUTH

the far left loves to adopt "victims" - I guess it makes them feel all warm and fluffy inside - that they are doing something worthwhile to battle the evil corporate monsters of the USA - so there has to be an Anti-American "angle" about their victimhood to promote


few from the left marched in support of a Kurdish homeland - even though their case is even stronger than the Palestinians. Yet the Far Left will readily introduce "Liberate Palestine" banners into every march going. Why? Because there's no anti-American mileage in supporting the Kurds

few from the left protest against China and Russia about their imperialism - same reason - no anti-American angle

it doesn't seem to matter to the left if the "victims" from the middle east include some of the most vicious oppressors or women, gay people and human rights in general - as long as there is anti-American (and by extension anti-Israel) mileage in supporting their cause

On the "peace" march in London I watched with incredulity at people marching under a huge banner proclaiming "Friends of the Al Asqa Martyr Brigade". In effect they were saying "Suicide Bomber's For Peace", but of course the irony was lost on them.

Don't wait up for hundreds of thousands of Socialist Workers demonstrating against ordinarily popular left wing causes if the perpetrators are an adopted "victim". Violent homophobia in the Palestinian territories, women being jailed for being raped in Pakistan, Saudis chopping limbs, Nigerian Shariah courts wanting to stone a pregnant woman to death and Sudanese genocide rarely get protested about in the West.

Of course the left will express "concern" about such barbarity, but their skewed perspective puts it on the back burner while they foam at the mouth about Israelis in bulldozers and American troops not leaving the Iraqis to kill each other.

Popular culture has shifted the left / pro-Arab agenda into the mainsteam now and it is rare to see a writer that dares to voice these truths. Thanks for posting it.

I agree that the left often pays too little attention to a host of issues, including some that you mention, compared to other issues. I suspect that is probably even truer here in the US than in the UK since most people here, the left included, pay little attention to world affairs unless the US military is bombing someone.

However, it should also be acknowledged that “the left” is the primary supporter of many international human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, who do, in fact pay quite a bit of attention to all of the issues you mentioned. That is overwhelmingly the case here in the US at least. When I was a budding young lefty in the mid/late 80s, I was a member of an Amnesty International. Back when I was naïve enough to think that writing letters to dictators actually accomplished something, our group campaigned around the treatment of Kurdish political prisoners in Iraq and in Turkey.

The governments of the US and UK are now in an unprecendented position to actually create a Kurdish homeland. They won't of course, and it would be useful to ask why. It has nothing to do with the tremendous power "the left" exerts on government policy.

Um, no disrespect intended, but that's kind of false.

While Western Europe was undergoing a Dark Age--mostly due to a series of crippling invasions that caused both the collapse of the Roman Empire and the civilizing factors it enforced on a greater Europe--the Greco-Roman Byzantine Empire was succesfully maintaining and advancing all of the things you listed above. The western people didn't just become illiterate and ignorant overnight. Islamic peoples didn't just miracle all these innovations as well. They inherited them in large part from the Byzantines who they pushed out of the Eastern Mediterranean and Asia Minor (over a period of 3-4 centuries), who in turn had inherited them from the remnants of the Hellenic culture and society present there since the days of Alexander. Were there many original things from Islamic nations? Of course! But I despise the perpetuation of the idea that the western world was unwashed, ignorant, and uncouth prior to being graced with knowledge from a post-Crusades forgiving Middle East.

Also, the Renaissance and friendlier relations? At the height of the Renaissance, Constantinople became Istanbul (and not by popular vote), and it took a guy called "The Impaler" to stop a not-so-friendly push to continue Mohammed's good work. At the same time, simply flying a Christian nation's flag was reason enough to be attacked by state-sponsored Muslim pirates in it as much for cash as they were for religion (depending on which guy you read about). To be accurate, "friendlier relations" is a historical term for the time when the Caliphate (minus the Ottomans, who wouldn't quit until the 19th century) decided it had enough land to relax (except when piracy in the name of religion might bring a profit).

I don't know National review. But in France when we see national in an organization, we are suspicious .

I'm in the far (very far) left. Really I would like not support victims. I'm fed up with killed people, raped women. If one time I can do a strike only to say "all is ok and I want to say", it will be wonderful.
I don't want to be a victimism lover. I just need to show what it is wrong.
You can applu whatyou said to feminism. those feminists are always speaking about rape, FGM and sad things. Really we are not " feel all warm and fluffy inside" with that .

Example Ben Laden. I hate him as everybody hates him I think. Imagine he is arrested by americans. If I learn he was raped and tortured in jail by american people, I will protest even he is a barbaric person.
I think you are a little manichean. For you, a terrorist is just an awful person. Can we just say that ? Can we deny him rights like other humans even he never apply these rights ? should we be as barbaric as him ?

I can fight against stoning people and fight for education in Nigeria even it involves some barbaric people will have with these rights.

could you please explain me what it means. I'm not sure to understand.

ok it is not funny at all (and I don't make a comparison) but I remember when french were named as worms in USA and UK.

I can give you my french opinion here (shared i think with lot of people in france). This sentence is frightening. It seems USA are God who can protect all the word against Evil. Evil changes : communism, islam....
It means USA know what the good is and can apply everywhere. It means USA are never wrong.
This sentence answers a little to the thread "Why Does Radical Islam Hate The West". Radical islam say USA are a country with an incredible influence in the word and an american say the same thing.

ps : I'm not attacking USA (for the low-minded people) I attack the article.
ps2 : I critizice USA because there are a lot articles about USA here (it is logical on an american board). I'm "awful" with my country too

okay Mathilde - I understand you a bit better and I know that people on the left MEAN well

It's just the thrust of the protests is UNDENIABLY against the USA when other nations are doing far more evil things than the USA

Can someone ban souljacker please

No disrespect taken. Part of my point was that things are always more complicated then they seem. I think you are helping me make that clear.
Let me add to some of the good information that you gave:
The original point I was responding to was that Western Civilization is currently the height of sophistication. I agree that this might be true. I am saying that it is valuable to remember that this has not always been the case. The Byzantine Empire, despite it's Christian and Hellenic origins, was NOT considered part of the "Western world" for most of its existence. It was considered part of the East; similar customs, traded almost exlusively eastward, had virtually no contact with Europe, etc.
Ofcourse there are complications behind this straight forward statement. During the almost 500 years of prosperous relations and trade between Byzantine and Islam (approx 700 AD to 1200 AD), these two groups are nominally at war with each other pretty much the WHOLE time. Go figure.
During the later part of this period great advances are made in many fields, and there is a largely unhindered flow of information back and forth (despite the whole fighting thing)(this being the friendlier relations I referred to in the original post). When we talk about information being preserved in the East during the Dark Ages of Europe, it is innacurate to say that it was done just by Islam. But that is not what I said. Islam, at the time, had more scholars, much larger collections of Hellenic scrolls (many from Alexandria), was about 10 times the size of Byzantine, was much more wealthy, and had access to the Far East. Byzantine scholars would travel to Islamic cities to study, rarely if ever the other way around. I could therefore argue that my original statement was not "false":
"Most of what we now know about original "western civilization" we had to learn back from Islam".
Everything changes when Constantinople is conquered in 1203 by the Fourth Crusade ((a very convoluted affair, especially because it was a Holy Crusade, sanctioned by pope Innocent III, attacking a Christian Emipre (piracy in the name of religion)). From this point onward Constantinople begins trading primarily with Europe and becomes part of the "Western" world (and knowledge begins to travel westward, one of the "seeds" of the Renaissance).
It would be more accurate therefore to say that the Western world was "graced with knowledge" by a quite muddled mid crusade Christian/Islamic East after it is conquered by the West (hehe).
You are right: when the Caliphate conquers Constantinople in 1453, Islam is already very much in decline and Europe (at the height of the Renaissance) is in ascendancy. And again you right: "friendly" relations, or anything even vaguely like it, are long gone. But the exchange of information has long since occurred at this point.
One could also make the argument that there was an entirely separate flow of information from the Islamic world to Europe through the Moors in Spain predating and directly contributing to the European Renaissance.
I never meant to disparage Western civilization, of which I am a proud part.
I just don't like, find constructive, or find accurate many of the dismissive attitudes toward other cultures/civilizations/religions that the current troubles of the world seem to be engendering. Seems that the only way to counter these things is to try to disseminate as much information as possible. Thanks for helping with that.

I think you missed the point. Hanson is saying the 'culture' of the Arab would has created the conflict we are now engaged in, and that trying to democratize the region is going to be an uphill battle because of that culture. He is also saying that the 'culture' of the left in the western world has erroneously portrayed these people as victims of the west, rather than perpetrators of their own problems.

As for your example of the IRA and the Unibomber, they are not comparable to the islamic terrorist. The IRA is fighting for the whole Irish island to be under one government, independant of the UK. The Unibomber was a wacko living in a shack, unsupported by any group or nation. Neither have the support of national television networks, national newspapers, or licensed radio networks. The popular media in the Middle East actively supports, promotes, and celebrates terrorism as practiced by the islamic fundamentalists.

There should have been a sentence break in there.
I thought SG readers might like to know more about the author of that post, and his very political backround (to put the article in context). The mention of the author's academic credentials suggests that the article might meets academic criteria, which it does not (any references supporting the claims being absent).
I did not mean to put forward any judgement of the validity of the argument.
I write policy papers at work all day, and don't feel like doing it here.
The judgement in my post should have been part of a second paragraph. The "don't judge a people by the presence of a terrorist element within them" is directed to the people who can't aknowledge the distinction between terrorist:Islam or Arab:Islam or terrorist:Arab.
There are many Muslims (the vast majority in fact) that do not believe in or condone terrorism.
Like I have said before, the Middle East represents only 15% of the Muslims in the world.
And there are a number of more moderate countries in the Middle East whose press and governments do not support, promote, or celebrate terrorism.
I don't like sweeping generalizations, especially those not supported by fact.

back

do you have a link about him ?

Yeah true. maybe we think USA have money, power todo what they want. I'm less hard with Nigeria (for example) because they don't have money, education and freedom you have.
For example, I can understand a country as Nigeria is against homosexual marriage because they need to educate themselves about it. I'm totally fed up with France (with our past and history) which is asking right now about gay marraige. I'm not very tolerate with rich countries that's true.

ok but that's the problem. Hanson doesn't define what arab is and what culture is.
culture in some countries is not only radical islam even fundamentalists try to do that.

Sure. link
Victor Hanson is undoubtedly a smart man. He is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution (public policy research center devoted to advanced study of politics, economics, and political economy based out of Stanford).
The Hoover Institution has eight fellows on the Bush administration's Defense Policy Board (DPB), as well as several current and former associates like Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice serving in the country's highest policy-making posts.
Hoover's $25 million annual budget is funded largely by a mix of conservative and corporate foundations.
Hanson is a Professor of Classics at California State University, Fresno.
His politics are undeniably right wing.
And the article listed above is originally from the private papers section of his personal web site. It is an opinion piece, not an academic or policy paper, and as such designed to make a particular point.
Hope that this is helpful.

[Edited on May 22, 2004 by recursion 'cause his spelling sucks]

[Edited on May 22, 2004 by recursion]

ok thanks a lot. I will take a littel time to read it

Hey recursion

That certainly was not the Byzantines' opinion, nor was their mercantile situation their choice. Early Byzantines viewed themselves as the Roman Empire, and their culture, government, military, and structure certainly reflect that for at least a few centuries. It is accepted that the fact that they traded and interacted more with the East is because the majority of Europe was, at the time, wrecked. The flavor of the Empire thus shifted to adopt the Hellenic qualities of the lands at the core of the Empire.

How did they get them? It would be a far more accurate statement to say that those in fact were repositories of knowledge built by Hellenes, Romans, and Byzantines, that largely happened to be in those lands because that's where they built them. Ptolemy built the Great Library where he did because Egypt was the kingdom he inherited after Alexander's death, not because he was Egyptian. None of these repositories became Islamic per se until the states and cities they were in fell forcibly to Mohammed's successors. At that point, yes, Byzantine scholars indeed had to travel to study, and for the subsequent generations until Byzantium's death-throes, their knowledge came second-hand for benign Muslim scholars.

Eh... I can't really address this, because I'm not too familiar with the Reconquista and the events leading to it. The Iberian peninsula under Muslim control certainly benefited culturally and socially, but I can't vouch for it contributing to the overall Renessaince, and Spaniards, Frenchmen, and any number of so-called Holy Orders were doing everything they could to drive the Moors out. Again, though, I can't speak on this with great accuracy.

You're very welcome, and I certainly hope no one reads my posts as hostile to the Eastern/Muslim world.

Phoebus said:
It would be a far more accurate statement to say that those in fact were repositories of knowledge built by Hellenes, Romans, and Byzantines, that largely happened to be in those lands because that's where they built them. Ptolemy built the Great Library where he did because Egypt was the kingdom he inherited after Alexander's death, not because he was Egyptian. None of these repositories became Islamic per se until the states and cities they were in fell forcibly to Mohammed's successors. At that point, yes, Byzantine scholars indeed had to travel to study, and for the subsequent generations until Byzantium's death-throes, their knowledge came second-hand for benign Muslim scholars.
QUOTE]

Yup, no argument here. Islam got most of its Hellenic knowledge by brutal conquest. Ptolemy, despite his Egyptian name, was Hellenic after all.
What's interesting is that once they had this knowledge Islam didn't hide any of it away but instead chose to share it.
And the theory that was held for many years that Islam was mainly a "holder" of knowledge, rather than a real contributor, has been largely disproven.
Again it comes to the same point. Islam is for the most part much more moderate that most of us might be inclined to think. Nothing inherent in Islam prevents cordial relations with the non-Muslim world. It is not a religion that requires its followers to be in constant conflict with non-believers, despite claims made by some radical Muslim leaders (or some radical Western leaders).
As long as Islamic radicalists have influence, and as long as the Western world gives these extremists fuel for their fires, there will be more unproductive violence. The only hope we have is that the moderates on both sides will be able to step forward.