Boy did this one backfire!

[BaalChatzaf]

I wonder if Tony or Richard or both would comment on the formation of Egypt's first Islamist political party -- that's the Hizb al-Wasat al-Jadid (also known as Al-Wasat).

I don't know much about it, and haven't had the time to find out. In a general sense, it's a sign that Islam has an audience in Egypt (but we didn't need the formation of Al-Wasat to know that) which can only, in the general sense again, be dangerous. Two million people in Tahrir square chanting "To Jerusalem we are heading, martyrs in the millions" isn't a good sign either.

There goes your Muslim. Different mountain, Different God.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Selene]

Two million people in Tahrir square chanting "To Jerusalem we are heading, martyrs in the millions" isn't a good sign either.

Richard:

Got a source for this?

Video?

Adam

Edited February 25, 2011 by Selene

[Richard Wiig]

Here, Adam.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=du5emnvGgvg&feature=player_embedded

[Selene]

Richard:

Thanks.

Glad to see you are OK.

I am going to send this to my Egyptian friend tonight and hopefully be able to confirm it for all of us by Monday.

Adam

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

A couple of days ago, Glenn Beck talked about the al Qaradawi sermon.

He asked Wael Ghonim and other Google folks how they felt about that. (They weren't present on the show. He was just asking out loud.) Wael Ghonim was to speak at that rally and he was barred from doing do. You won't read much about that in the Western press. You can in the Hindustan Times, though:

Egypt protest hero Wael Ghonim barred from stage

February 18, 2011

Hindustan Times

Beck asked how that Egyptian freedom stuff is working out for the good folks from Google.

Both Wael Ghonim and other Google people had made all kinds of waves about how they were now the do-gooders of the world, wrenching democracy for the people from the bloody clutches of evil dictators. But what they got in the end was not that. Once they had served their role of useful idiots for some really bad guys, they were spit out like chewing tobacco.

Welcome to the real world where you don't get to change the channel with a remote control when you don't like the show.

And so much for trying to fight a dictator with do-gooder public manipulation, no matter how touchy-feely it is, while ignoring the toxic ideology waiting in the wings. It doesn't work the way they want it to. You just can't trick people into freedom. They have to want it as a value in itself.

(Since I suspect this will spark more Islam-bashing, I am not talking about Islam, the religion. I am talking about the fundamentalist denomination of theocratic Islam that has incorporated elements of Nazi thought into it.)

Michael

[Richard Wiig]

I am not talking about Islam, the religion. I am talking about the fundamentalist denomination of theocratic Islam that has incorporated elements of Nazi thought into it.)

Yeah, yeah. It's tiresome hearing that. The Dhimmi system, which has been with Islam for near 1400 years, is nazi-like through and through, yet you have a theory that similarities with Nazism have existed only since some muslims heard of Hitler. Quite frankly, it's laughable.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Richard,

The guy who funds your intellectual source of all wisdom (Jihad Watch) happens to agree with me. His name is David Horowitz.

If you like, I can find a video or two--I was pleasantly surprised to stumble across a video version of his participation on Hannity's radio show where he said precisely what I say.

Would you find it laughable, also, coming from him?

Michael

[Richard Wiig]

If he says that Islam had no supremacist fascist like traits before the nazis, then yes, I'd say that he is equally as wrong as you are. The nazi collaboration is well documented (and I don't know of anyone who denies that, as you keep saying they do) but it is an absolute fact that Islam didn't gain its fascist traits from Hitler. It gained them from Muhammad. That's precisely why fanatical muslims were open to collaborating with the nazis. They share the same anti-semitic sentiments, the same collectivist mentality, the same notions of superiority over others. Jews and Christians have been treated as second class citizens throughout the history of Islam, often being forced to wear special insignia to mark them as jews or Christians, all of it Islamically based. There is a whole history there that you are simply ignoring.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Richard,

There are two separate issues--and I see you always use the deflection technique when we discuss them.

Issue No. 1 - The actual physical danger and the actual identification of the bad guys coming from the Islamic world. (These are the Islamo-Nazi-Fascist whatever you want to call them. By this, I mean the old Ba'ath Party, the Twelvers, the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood, and groups like that.)

Issue No. 2 - Islamic literature and history has a past full or ups and downs (just like other large religions that have mixed with politics). In the case of Islam, certain texts and acts/saying of Muhammad have been used to justify the oppressive times.

Are those particular texts and acts/saying of Muhammad in No. 2 good? No. Have they been used by bad guys--both now and before? Yes.

Now here's the rub. Is that all that's involved? The answer is emphatically no--but that's the part you constantly ignore. And when someone brings up the other stuff as equally fundamental (if not more so), you ignore it and pretend they are justifying the bad stuff in Islamic history. You deflect clear issues toward muddy oversimplification.

Speaking against one bad thing does not justify ignoring another and blowing it off with the intellectual equivalent of a pat on the head when faced with hard facts. It does not justify misidentifying the enemy right now, which is what you constantly do. And whenever someone talks about the enemy and the actual ideas he holds (with documentation and everything else for validation), you sidestep and target the entire religion.

This last exchange is a good example. I just mentioned that Horowitz agrees with me (at least on that show I mentioned) that the really evil bad guys--the ones who want to kill us and act on it--adhere to a mixture of Islam and Nazism.

And all you do is say that Islam has bad parts to its history, so that very idea is laughable--but by the way, nobody is ignoring that the Nazism has had some role--with the insinuation that nobody ever needs to talk about that stuff since it is not important. Pure Islam as a religion, instead, is what drives the bad guys.

That's just wrong. In essence, you give off the impression that the Qur'an as a whole is antisemitic, preaches terrorism, etc., to the extent that Nazi ideology is an incidental unimportant accident of history to Islamist states.

When people point out to you that gazillions of Muslims adhere to Islam (including following the teachings of Muhammad) without all the rabid antisemitism, terrorism, etc., you just ignore it and talk bad about Muhammad.

This shows lack of objectivity and oversimplified hatred. What's worse, no one can even use this blank-out scapegoating approach for anything practical other than stirring up bigots.

Is that what you truly want to do? Or are you interested in intellectual warfare for real?

The bigotry is a child's game. Helping new ideas spread to an entire culture is for adult men and women of the mind.

I used to think Horowitz was more child than adult. I no longer do. While I don't agree with the excesses of some tactics like Jihad Watch, some of his other efforts have led me to believe he is more objective than bigot. In my view, he does public relations on the home front to keep toxic ideology from taking root here (both left and Islamist). His field is political public relations (or propaganda, as it was called in the old days). It is not necessarily spreading good ideas to the Islamic world.

The difference I see between him and you, outside of the fact that he actually publishes and presents a lot of stuff to mainstream audiences, is that he does not blow off facts (except when he is doing a propaganda piece) or the efforts of those who work to spread the ideas of freedom, individual rights and reason to the Islamic world just so he can bash the religion.

I even identify with his spirit (fighting fire with fire), albeit I find the entire field of propaganda nauseating. To be more specific, I find propaganda to be a fascinating field of study (especially how the unconscious mind is manipulated in crowds with persuasion techniques), but I cannot do it myself. The idea of me actually setting up and operating a public campaign to misrepresent things deliberately in order to influence politics is the part I find nauseating.

Michael

[Richard Wiig]

Richard,

There are two separate issues--and I see you always use the deflection technique when we discuss them.

Issue No. 1 - The actual physical danger and the actual identification of the bad guys coming from the Islamic world. (These are the Islamo-Nazi-Fascist whatever you want to call them. By this, I mean the old Ba'ath Party, the Twelvers, the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood, and groups like that.)

A list that is as long as both of your arms. You have to identify them from where? The Islamic community. There's no issue there, really. It's a straight out in your face fact, and we either deal with it or don't.

Are those particular texts and acts/saying of Muhammad in No. 2 good?

Of course they are not good. The question is, are they Islamic? The answer it yes. Were they around before Hitler and his nazis? The answer is yes. Have they been the basis of fascist type movements prior to Hitler and his nazis? The answer is yes. Do they promote and inculcate anti-semitism? The answer it yes. Do they promote and inculcate attitudes of superiority over others? The answer it is yes.

Now here's the rub. Is that all that's involved? The answer is emphatically no--but that's the part you constantly ignore.

It isn't something that I ignore at all, and I'd like you to retract that lie. I fully acknowledge nazi influences on certain Islamic groups. When Hezbollah make the nazi salute, it's pretty damn clear where they picked that up from. They have obviously structured themselves by learning from the nazis. However, none of that has anything to do with fundamentals. At root they are an Islamic group, not a nazi group. There is no deflection in saying that. It's an observation of fact.

And when someone brings up the other stuff as equally fundamental (if not more so), you ignore it and pretend they are justifying the bad stuff in Islamic history. You deflect clear issues toward muddy oversimplification.

Reducing issues to their fundamentals is not oversimplification, whatever oversimplification is, it is to strip away all the side issues and non-essentials to go to the root. That isn't deflection, it is focus. The Mujahideen, as they call themselves, do not refer to Mein Kampf and Nazi philosophy to justify their actions. They do not claim they are fighting to impose Nazism and Hitlers Third Reich on the world, although they do praise Hitler for what he did to the Jews, everything they refer to, everything they ground the basis of their cause in, is their devotion to the Qur'an and Sunnah. They say they are out to impose Islam on the world, and when you look at everything they refer to as the basis for their actions, you find out that that basis is there. That is their primary focus. Pointing that out is not muddying the waters, nor is it a deflection. It is the pointing out of a fact.

Speaking against one bad thing does not justify ignoring another and blowing it off with the intellectual equivalent of a pat on the head when faced with hard facts.

Who has blown it off? Once again, I ask you to retract that lie. No one has blown it off, but there are plenty who disagree that nazism is the fundamental basis for the movement to re-establish the Caliphate. Devotion to Islam is their fundamental basis and its teachings is what guides them. If anyone is blowing anything off, it is you. Your constant charges of bigotry and oversimplification, are constant examples of deflection.

Edited February 26, 2011 by Infidel

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Reducing issues to their fundamentals is not oversimplification, whatever oversimplification is, it is to strip away all the side issues and non-essentials to go to the root.

Richard,

OK.

The Mujahideen, as they call themselves, do not refer to Mein Kampf and Nazi philosophy to justify their actions. They do not claim they are fighting to impose Nazism and Hitlers Third Reich on the world.

I submit that to call Nazi fundamental principles "Mein Kampf," "Nazism" and "Hitler's Third Reich" is to blow it all off big time.

Do you even know what a principle is? Do you know what wedding ideas together means? Is that statement of yours above what you call "reducing issues to their fundamentals"? Good Lord!

Here's a news flash. Identifying fundamentals doesn't mean to point at a book or the names of others. It means to isolate the concepts, fer Krisssakes. Things like genocide to ensure racial purity, socialism with a supreme leader, propaganda and terrorism as political tools, and so forth.

That's dealing with principles.

Talk about sidestepping from a concrete-bound mentality.

So I can't retract my observation because it is true. You just showed, in the same paragraph, that there is no lie.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here's how you do a principle.

Nazi principle: Genocide to ensure Ayrian racial purity--especially elimination of the Jews.

Now wed this to elements of Islam.

Islamist principle: Genocide to ensure Islamic religious purity--especially elimination of the Jews.

That is thinking in principles.

Not saying they don't preach from Mein Kampf, so there is not real Nazi stuff.

Michael

[Selene]

Although Phil does make a point. Perhaps you do respond too fast without fully digesting. It's the only thing I can attribute this comment...

Not saying they don't preach from Mein Kampf, so there is not real Nazi stuff.

...to, if it isn't dishonesty.

Richard:

Out of curiosity, what would be Michael's interest, or value, in being "dishonest"?

Adam

[Richard Wiig]

Protection of his position, in other words, keeping a distance from losing face, the same as when anyone is dishonest in an intellectual argument. I'm prepared to go with the idea that he mightn't be being dishonest, but if that is the case, then he hasn't taken the time to properlly comprehend what I've said. If he had, he wouldn't be misrepresenting me as he is doing.

[Brant Gaede]

Richard,

There are two separate issues--and I see you always use the deflection technique when we discuss them.

Issue No. 1 - The actual physical danger and the actual identification of the bad guys coming from the Islamic world. (These are the Islamo-Nazi-Fascist whatever you want to call them. By this, I mean the old Ba'ath Party, the Twelvers, the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood, and groups like that.)

A list that is as long as both of your arms. You have to identify them from where? The Islamic community. There's no issue there, really. It's a straight out in your face fact, and we either deal with it or don't.

Are those particular texts and acts/saying of Muhammad in No. 2 good?

Of course they are not good. The question is, are they Islamic? The answer it yes. Were they around before Hitler and his nazis? The answer is yes. Have they been the basis of fascist type movements prior to Hitler and his nazis? The answer is yes. Do they promote and inculcate anti-semitism? The answer it yes. Do they promote and inculcate attitudes of superiority over others? The answer it is yes.

Now here's the rub. Is that all that's involved? The answer is emphatically no--but that's the part you constantly ignore.

It isn't something that I ignore at all, and I'd like you to retract that lie. I fully acknowledge nazi influences on certain Islamic groups. When Hezbollah make the nazi salute, it's pretty damn clear where they picked that up from. They have obviously structured themselves by learning from the nazis. However, none of that has anything to do with fundamentals. At root they are an Islamic group, not a nazi group. There is no deflection in saying that. It's an observation of fact.

And when someone brings up the other stuff as equally fundamental (if not more so), you ignore it and pretend they are justifying the bad stuff in Islamic history. You deflect clear issues toward muddy oversimplification.

Reducing issues to their fundamentals is not oversimplification, whatever oversimplification is, it is to strip away all the side issues and non-essentials to go to the root. That isn't deflection, it is focus. The Mujahideen, as they call themselves, do not refer to Mein Kampf and Nazi philosophy to justify their actions. They do not claim they are fighting to impose Nazism and Hitlers Third Reich on the world, although they do praise Hitler for what he did to the Jews, everything they refer to, everything they ground the basis of their cause in, is their devotion to the Qur'an and Sunnah. They say they are out to impose Islam on the world, and when you look at everything they refer to as the basis for their actions, you find out that that basis is there. That is their primary focus. Pointing that out is not muddying the waters, nor is it a deflection. It is the pointing out of a fact.

Speaking against one bad thing does not justify ignoring another and blowing it off with the intellectual equivalent of a pat on the head when faced with hard facts.

Who has blown it off? Once again, I ask you to retract that lie. No one has blown it off, but there are plenty who disagree that nazism is the fundamental basis for the movement to re-establish the Caliphate. Devotion to Islam is their fundamental basis and its teachings is what guides them. If anyone is blowing anything off, it is you. Your constant charges of bigotry and oversimplification, are constant examples of deflection.

Islam was spread by the sword and now by the sword and babies. If the jihadists can put some Naziism into their gas tanks for a little more power they'll do that too. They get a lot more additional power from oil wealth than anything else, even Jew and Israel hatred. In this sense they are scapegoating Jews just like the Nazis did. As a force for evil, Islam is a lot less vigorous than Naziism was or communism was and is. Communism and its leftest minions is still a gigantic force for evil. Islam mostly lies on the ground burping along waiting for the Taliban, praying instead of thinking. What's to think about? Family honor? The next prayer session? Try thinking while praying five times a day.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Protection of his position, in other words, keeping a distance from losing face, the same as when anyone is dishonest in an intellectual argument. I'm prepared to go with the idea that he mightn't be being dishonest, but if that is the case, then he hasn't taken the time to properlly comprehend what I've said. If he had, he wouldn't be misrepresenting me as he is doing.

If you are willing to entertain the idea he didn't properly understand you, you have no business whatsoever calling him a liar and dishonest. If a mis-understanding is the case, then why do you fail to understand that saying that doesn't establish it's his fault instead of yours.

--Brant

[Richard Wiig]

As a force for evil, Islam is a lot less vigorous than Naziism was or communism was and is.

I disagree with you on that score. The cartoon protests, and many more since, have certainly haven't lacked vigour. I think it is a lot more widespread and insidious than Nazism ever was, because much goes on under the cloak of religion, a cloak that many western eyes fail to see.

They think in terms of their familiar view of religion - one of an individual personal affair. Islam is not individualist, it is collectivist through and through, as collectivist as communism and nazism ever was.

Communism and its leftest minions is still a gigantic force for evil.

Absolutely, and they are very much aligning with Islam.

Islam mostly lies on the ground burping along waiting for the Taliban, praying instead of thinking. What's to think about? Family honor? The next prayer session? Try thinking while praying five times a day

That isn't true. You can hardly say that Sayyd Qutb and many many others, weren't and aren't thinkers. They are thinkers with a longterm view and a hell of a lot of patience at working towards their goal.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Richard,

I'm not even throwing your crap posts in the Garbage Pile anymore. I'm deleting them.

If they keep up, I will restrict your posting privileges.

I will not warn you anymore. I'll just do it.

Since you appear to have difficulty understanding principles, I will state the one governing this: property rights.

In a post I deleted, you sputtered incredulously that you were allowed to think certain things about me but not allowed to express them. Of course, this shows a lack of understanding principles again. Of course you can express them. There are bazillions of sites on the Internet where you can express every kindergarten taunt to me in your dear little head. You just can't express them here in my house.

That's how property rights works. You don't have to like it or think it's fair. But that's the way it is.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Islam was spread by the sword and now by the sword and babies. If the jihadists can put some Naziism into their gas tanks for a little more power they'll do that too.

Brant,

Some do this, but the history of the modern Islamist organizations shows a deeper absorption of Nazi ideas than just something to help them along in evil plans. The parts of Nazi thought they absorbed are evil in themselves--evil in ways that cannot be derived from Islamic history or works.

A good instance is in the way they use propaganda. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which has been discredited the world over, is still promoted by Islamists as the paragon of truth about Jews. Hell, they even made a TV series out of it a few short years ago.

Take a look at the Caliphate in the old Ottoman Empire. That was an attempt to govern the world under Islam. Did they do that kind of stuff back then? Look and see. From my research, that Caliphate had very little to do with the way the kooks in power in, say, Iran do stuff.

I believe the Ottoman Empire crumbled because of certain weaknesses in the very notion of governing under religion (starting with how easy corruption is when your final standard is an invisible supernatural being--so it can be invoked as whatever persuasive and/or powerful people say it is to justify whatever they say they want to do as law).

The Islamist version of attempting a Caliphate, which includes terrorism tactics like suicide bombing, declarations of worshiping death, and so forth, is a whole lot more evil than just some people who think Muhammad did this or that, interpret it in a vile way and want to emulate him.

Notice how easy the concept of "Zionist" transforms into "Jew" in general within Islamist culture--like say, when that reporter, Lara Logan, got gang raped in Egypt recently while the crowd of male onlookers chanted, "Jew!... Jew!... Jew!... Jew!... Jew!..." That doesn't come from Islam. That comes straight from Nazi propaganda against Jews that has been absorbed in that culture.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

Notice how easy the concept of "Zionist" transforms into "Jew" in general within Islamist culture--like say, when that reporter, Lara Logan, got gang raped in Egypt recently while the crowd of male onlookers chanted, "Jew!... Jew!... Jew!... Jew!... Jew!..." That doesn't come from Islam. That comes straight from Nazi propaganda against Jews that has been absorbed in that culture.

Michael

Muslim extremists have been anti-Jewish since long before WWI. It was not caused by, nor did it originate with the Nazis.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Bob,

Of course antisemitism did not originate with Nazis nor was it unknown to the Muslim world before the Nazis. I did not claim that.

But I think anyone would be hard pressed to find a gang-rape in public in the Muslim world the way that happened to Lara Logan (during a political celebration at that!) before the Nazis happened to the Muslim world.

I also seriously doubt you will find that kind of thing happening in, say, Malaysia, where that form of Islamo-Nazi ideology is not present.

Michael

[Richard Wiig]

I also seriously doubt you will find that kind of thing happening in, say, Malaysia, where that form of Islamo-Nazi ideology is not present.

On the contrary. The Islamification of Malaysia is well and truly underway, along with a very healthy militancy in the country. Perhaps it is an Islamic militancy that lacks the nazi flavour, as per the militancy in the south of Thailand, where Bhuddists and other non-muslims are frequently murdered for the sake of Islamic supremacism. Or perhaps it does have a nazi tinge to it, I don't know. I do know that at root it is Islamic.

[Richard Wiig]

like say, when that reporter, Lara Logan, got gang raped in Egypt recently while the crowd of male onlookers chanted, "Jew!... Jew!... Jew!... Jew!... Jew!..." That doesn't come from Islam.

Andrew Bostom has extensively documented the legacy of anti-semtitism that is rooted in Islam.

http://www.andrewbostom.org/content/view/15/1/

A review essay here:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/05/the_legacy_of_islamic_antisemi.html

[Brant Gaede]

Michael, I speculate that the fall of the Turkish Caliphate had a lot to do with the tiredness of a city and culture that went back to the halcyon days of the Roman Empire. Rome, Christianity, Islam: a big thread runs through the history of Constantinople. Please note, however, I'm not taking issue with you.

--Brant

[william.scherk]

A couple of days ago, Glenn Beck talked about the al Qaradawi sermon.

He asked Wael Ghonim and other Google folks how they felt about that. (They weren't present on the show. He was just asking out loud.) Wael Ghonim was to speak at that rally and he was barred from doing do. You won't read much about that in the Western press. You can in the Hindustan Times, though:

Egypt protest hero Wael Ghonim barred from stage

Beck asked how that Egyptian freedom stuff is working out for the good folks from Google.

Was this from the Feb 21st show?

Edited February 27, 2011 by william.scherk