13 thoughts on “Do You Remember…”

  1. First, that’s a false equivalency, these brothers didn’t work for the “Islamic Broadcasting Network.” They appear to have acted by themselves without real direction. In short, they were home grown radicals.

    Second, more importantly, you seem to have a poor memory about things which are similar. Let me remind you that the very same day, someone set off a bomb outside an NAACP office, and I remember Eric William Rudolph bombing medical clinics because he, on religious grounds, did not agree with. Let me remind you about the two people (the couple) who, based on their radical pro-gun views, shot up a Subway (as I recall), then took their own lives.

    Extremism, in any form, promotes ugly, often violent behavior. I’m only commenting here Mitch because I came to encourage you to also post the (any) cartoon from the satarists at Charlie Hebdo which pokes fun at Muhammad. Don’t allow any extremist to win by intimidation, including not allowing the government (any government), rather than spending your time trying to parse how your version of extremism is better or different. It’s not so very different, there are extremists on the left and the right who will act violently (in this country and elsewhere). Religion is used wrongly, things are done in it’s name which are a perversion. Just as Eric Rudolph was an anathema who didn’t speak for all Christians (certainly not me), nor did these brothers speak, not even close, for all, or a majority of Muslims. Trying to suggest that Christianity is somehow different is both bogus (a great deal of harm has been done by Christians in the last 100 years) and misses the point entirely. It is not the “good” side of religion which is the problem, not of any religion, it is the ability for it to be misused and our seeming willingness to be mislead by it, which is. Oh, and in addition, maybe you might want to refrain from calling the French “cheese eating surrender monkeys”, just a thought, well you and P.J. O’Rourke, because quite honestly, most French seem to take their commitment to real liberty a bit more seriously than a few too many Americans I know.

    So which is it Mitch, spend your time fatuously claiming “Islam is different” or stand up to radicals and refuse to be terrorized? I’d be pleased to see us stand together on this.

  2. Also Mitch, neither Falwel NOR Muhammad EVER said people could not depict them, including in satire, so again, there is no equivalency. The proscription against such depictions are in Hadith only, oral traditions handed down many generations after Muhammad’s death, and their religious veracity is, at best, questionable. Further, it is a proscription against depicting ANY prophet in an unflattering way, including Jesus Christ. Given the outcry against the artistic depictions of Robert Maplethorpe, it certainly seems at least some on the right would agree with the prohibitions in the Hadith, n’est pas?

  3. Pen, Rudolph is a looney. He has claimed that he preferred Nietzsche to the Bible. In any event I have never met a Christian who endorsed violence or the murder of anyone on religious grounds.
    Large numbers of Muslims, even immigrants in the US, endorse violence on religious grounds. You can look up the stats on your own, they are horrific.
    Anyone who believes that the danger from “Christian terrorism” or “Jewish terrorism” is in any way comparable to the daily barrage of Islamic terrorism has a screw loose.

  4. Forty-five percent say 9/11 was a conspiracy by the American and Israeli governments. This figure is more than twice as high as those who say it was not a conspiracy. Tragically, almost one in four British Muslims believe that last year’s 7/7 attacks on London were justified because of British support for the U.S.-led war on terror.

    When asked, “Is Britain my country or their country?” only one in four say it is. Thirty percent of British Muslims would prefer to live under Sharia (Islamic religious) law than under British law. According to the report, “Half of those who express a preference for living under Sharia law say that, given the choice, they would move to a country governed by those laws.”

    http://www.cbsnews.com/news/many-british-muslims-put-islam-first/
    Islamic extremism leads to Islamic terrorism. It is a causal relationship. Islamic extremism — measured by support for terrorism, support for Sharia, etc., is not in doubt.
    You have to be blinded by ideology to assert, as many on the Left do, that there is no connection between Islam and Muslims who insist that that they will kill because their religion, and who follow through by killing people while shouting religious slogans.

  5. Penigma that’s an embarrassing ‘thought’ process completely devoid of consideration for what’s been going the last several years …….

  6. meanwhile over at the peeve blog DG provides the following well reasoned argument:

    “The radical right, the worst of the bad actors on the religious right, and of course the perpetually bad actors over at the NRA have blood on their hands in the recent terrorism incidents (plural) in France, and likely will have more blood on their hands, for their contribution to terrorists possessing military weapons, including fully automatic firearms and RPGs.”

  7. I trimmed DGs post down to size but nowhere in her whole long screed about how christians and the NRA are raining bloodshed on the world does she mention the proven track record of the Obama administration in fostering bloodshed and gun violence (i.e. Fast and Furious)

  8. The Left consistently makes their fellow citizens their worst enemies. Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Castro, always the same old song. “We need to purge the bad elements among us”.
    Some years ago, I was talking with a fellow at work about what we should do about religious terrorism. He said “First we have to take care of the Taliban right here in the USA!” I told him that the Taliban was an Afghan thing, and that he must mean al Qaida. He told me that he meant Jerry Fallwell.

  9. Penigma conveniently leaves out the fact that the french police are already finding that these guys were not lone wolves. “Oops.”

    And Doggone is arguing that the U.S. NRA, with no legal access to fully automatic AKs, are involved in providing the same to French terrorists? Seriously?

    Sounds like anyone working in the stupid pill factory had better be prepared for some overtime tonight. Supplies are getting perilously low since Dog and Pen are taking so many.

  10. “Fatuously claiming Islam is different…” It is different. Very different, as in still stuck in the 7th century.

  11. Pen,

    I’ll give it a shot, here.

    First, that’s a false equivalency, these brothers didn’t work for the “Islamic Broadcasting Network.” They appear to have acted by themselves without real direction. In short, they were home grown radicals.

    Your conclusion is both faith-based – French police apparently are saying they appear to have had extensive contacts with AQAP, and AQAP is claiming credit, whether warranted or not, which in a practical sense makes the attackers’ motivations moot – and not especially relevant; while there is a difference between a lone wolf and someone controlled from overseas, they’re both problem. No?

    They were Muslim extremists – like the Fort Hood shooter, the man in Oklahoma who beheaded the woman at the chicken plant, the guy who ran and killed the Canadian sergeant, the one that killed the Canadian honor guardsman, the people who butchered 200 school kids in Peshawar, the ones that have murdered 2,000 people in recent weeks in Nigeria; some were apparently acting on orders; some were apparently do-it-yourselfers.

    And the Paris killers were pretty forthright about it. All else is splitting hairs.

    Second, more importantly, you seem to have a poor memory about things which are similar…

    That paragraph has been dispatched above; a few isolated incidents over two decades don’t make a “movement”.

    Let’s take a moment to talk about Islam, and then we can compare knowledge.

    In the past 1,000 years, Islam has had a lot of different views about the sanctity of Muhammed’s image; images of The Prophet were as big and important a part of art in some parts of Islam (especially in India) as those of Christ were in the Renaissance.

    Wahhabi Muslims from Saudi Arabia, though, have spent $100 billion dollars over the past fifty years exporting a particular highly puritannical, fundamentalist, and in some places violent and eliminationist Sunni sect around the world.

    With that in mind, Pen, what Christian group has spent $100 billion dollars fomenting fundamentalist, eliminationist, violent millenarian Christianity?

    Go for it.

    Extremism, in any form, promotes ugly, often violent behavior. I’m only commenting here Mitch because I came to encourage you to also post the (any) cartoon from the satarists at Charlie Hebdo which pokes fun at Muhammad.

    No. Charlie Hebdo, under the aegis of “satire”, pointlessly antagonized people. That’s their niche, they’re welcome to it, nobody deserved to die for it. I’m not carrying their scatological attacks on the Prophet any more than I’d promote “Piss Christ”. I need not specifically defend or promote any idiot’s statement to defend free speech. And I don’t.

    Don’t allow any extremist to win by intimidation, including not allowing the government (any government), rather than spending your time trying to parse how your version of extremism is better or different.

    Strawman. I have no version of extremism. I’m not an extremist of any type.

    So which is it Mitch, spend your time fatuously claiming “Islam is different” or stand up to radicals and refuse to be terrorized? I’d be pleased to see us stand together on this

    Well, that’s great. But you offer a false dilemma.

    Wahhabi Islam is different. Noplace in Christianity, least of all the New Testament, are believers told to kill infidels. And while the Islamic imprecation to kill infidels was written in wartime and is presented out of context by Wahhabi and other extremist clerics, it is an out-of-context belief that has killed thousands in recent years.

    There is no equivalence in Christianity. None.

    But let’s throw the challenge back to you; what do you see as the equivalency – NOT in terms of scattered outburst by people whom the mainstream disavowed and brought to justice forthwith, but in terms of core beliefs as understood by significant numbers of believers?

    That’s an answer I’d like to see you take a whack at.

  12. Also, Pen,

    Also Mitch, neither Falwel NOR Muhammad EVER said people could not depict them, including in satire, so again, there is no equivalency.

    Right, I know that; it’s the terrorists who believe in the unwritten imprecation against the graven image. Not me.

    The proscription against such depictions are in Hadith only, oral traditions handed down many generations after Muhammad’s death, and their religious veracity is, at best, questionable. Further, it is a proscription against depicting ANY prophet in an unflattering way, including Jesus Christ. Given the outcry against the artistic depictions of Robert Maplethorpe, it certainly seems at least some on the right would agree with the prohibitions in the Hadith, n’est pas?

    N’est!

    I don’t know any signficant figure on the cultural right that called for Mapplethorpe to be censored, much less shot down like a dog.

  13. Mitch, seriously for a minute… Did DG suffer a traumatic brain injury at some point in its life?

    I don’t want to mock a critter that became stupid through no fault of its own.

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