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A Ridiculous Young Man
Every recent immigrant and their offspring declare the superiority of American law and culture with every breath they take, with every moment they remain. There is no Soviet-like wall preventing departure. Immigrant community Muslims in America bear witness to the undeniable superiority of American life and freedoms simply by (a) remaining and (b) enjoying opportunities and rights that do not exist in Shariah-shaped cultures.
Is there some programmed psychological barrier that prevents Muslim reflection, cultural self-appraisal, and needed reform? The bizarre need to deny the sheer atrocity of Oct 7 indicates a shared cognitive war against inconvenient facts and the warped realities of Palestinian culture and the peculiarities of Arab national fantasy life.
How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy…Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. -Winston Churchill
If Gazans were to adopt genuine democracy, economic freedoms protected by the rule of law (not a corrupt dictatorship claiming religious authority and/or a manufactured national history), equal rights for women, and a mature, peaceful respect for neighboring peoples, the United States would happily support such a nation, as it does other democracies. But terrorism, lies, corruption and a mandatory death cult mentality is a collective choice to forfeit the support and respect of all decent people and all democratic governments, especially ours.
So we have this young Hamas adherent, well-fed, well-dressed, enrolled in an American university, speaking at a public podium and saying stupid things in opposition to common sense, decency, and the United States federal government without fear of government sanction of any kind. The context for that speech is a statement all by itself. And under those circumstances, encouraging chants of “death to America” while quoting the execrable Khomeini makes Tarek Bazzi a ridiculous man. And Islam is designed to prevent him from realizing that.
Published in General
How does Islam do that? @oldbathos
Exactly correct.
According to Theodore Dalrymple, Islam may not be compatible with reason.
I know what our Constitutional provides this young man in terms of his right to have and express his views but what is wrong with the public opinion of Americans? Is it that all our public institutions have been co-opted?
Not just Muslims.
Their “allies” on the lamebrain Left, who somehow imagine that their lifestyle peccadillos will meet with more respect than they currently receive from Christianity.
The Gays for Gaza should read up a little more on the writings of the late, unlamented Ayatollah Khomeini.
I wonder how a demonstration would be received in Gaza or Iran if a crowd of people were chanting “Death to Palestine” or “Death to Iran”?
London, even. Or parts of France and Sweden and Germany and…
First, require a literal acceptance of the Koran and the Hadith which creates certain weird contradictions.
Christianity has living Greek and Judaic intellectual underpinnings and adaptations. Islam has instead undergone rebellions against any outside intellectual influence (See, Al Ghazali) to purge impure notions. The Wahhabi influence via the Saudis is just such an express rejection of non-Koranic reality. The Iranian mullahs who go through imam training at Qom learn to crush out secular perspectives on anything and everything.
By way of contrast, Thomas Aquinas would say that if you find a conflict between faith and natural reason, then the problem is your understanding of one or both because that which is true does not contradict anything else that is true. Islamic teachers would instinctively tell you that it is non-religious notion that has to be wrong.
By the middle of the eleventh century, there were sophisticated Muslim philosophers trying to reconcile science and religion (e.g., The arrow in flight does follow the rules of physics but that does not mean that there was a first cause and the material world keeps moving away from it–the apparent rules of nature are merely “the habit of Allah” who could change them anytime because the connection to creation is persistent.) Baghdad was the intellectual world capital.
All that went into rapid decline because of movements to reassert that old-time religion. Islam has not led the world since then. The 9/11 terrorists chose airplanes and tall buildings because they were manifestations of the scientific, economic, technological, and cultural superiority of the West. It was a uniquely Muslim tantrum against a world order they were taught was supposed to be an Islamic-dominated world.
The Arab street is possessed of wild conspiracy theories or even stories about how they actually won the 1973 and 1967 wars. Arab Islamic culture appears to have the effect of freeing the believer from any duty of intellectual consistency other than unyielding support of their side in any conflict or argument and an inability to understand why they are so manifestly inferior in technology and military or political organization. Confronting the inherent limitations of Islam is simply a does-not-compute moment for them.
The reasons the Israelis always kick their butts, why the home-team fourth-largest army in the world lasted less than a month against against Gen. Schwarzkopf et al. on a road trip, and why they even lose to Iranian forces are never learned by the Arabs. Just deny reality, claim religious righteousness to justify everything, and never look in the mirror.
I think that is a fair assessment. It was never about adaptation but the attempt to bludgeon reality into conformity with doctrine.
Thanks. That is good coverage of what they do. Now we have adherents of Islam, in greater than ever numbers, bringing those beliefs, and practices where they can, to America and we are seeing it seeping into our governing influences. Just one more set of falsehoods to fight off.
Loyalty oaths are taboo in our system. Still, it makes you wonder whether there should be some kind of citizenship requirement to renounce suras that call for the enslavement or death of non-believers.
John Kennedy two months before the 1960 election speaking to Protestant ministers in Houston: “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the President—should he be Catholic—how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote.”
If the Koran tells one to kill Jews and Christians, how does one separate “church and state” regarding such beliefs?
Yes. And it is the same programmed psychological barrier that still lives in every member of our species: Our ancient instinct for reflexive tribal solidarity. Of course, tribal solidarity had its uses. It was necessary for our survival in our hunter/gatherer days, but many of the peoples of the world have never shaken it.
Still others have been commanded to shake it. About 2000 years ago a young Judean rabbi directed his followers to do something that, when taken seriously, puts an absolute wrecking ball to tribalism. He put it this way:
Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you…
Matthew 5:43
It is not possible to live by what the rabbi said AND remain trapped by tribalism.
Disregard what the rabbi said, and chances are you will be trapped by tribalism forever.
Muslims are playing the long game. The objective is to become the dominant demographic and then implement changes so that the church and state are one, operating under sharia law and Islamic doctrine.
I meant people at Ricochet
In the absence of any efforts at reform, acceptance of the words the Koran to kill infidels should be treated as ‘incitement’ and ‘loss of citizenship’ and any right to vote should be part of the penalty.
It is no coincidence that “Pakistan” means “land of the pure”.
Those that don’t leave stay in order to destroy.
Oh. Them. They could stand a little more reading too.
Islam has a significant connection to governing so there must be a significant evil there.
Abdus Salam tried to bridge was given nothing but hostility for it by Pakistan.
This was when he left Pakistan for London after the Pakistan government declared that Ahmadis were not Muslim and so he left Pakistan for London. His grave used to say, First Muslim Nobel Laureate but the Pakistani government removed Muslim from his gravestone.
Heh.™ Indeed.™
Shorter answer: 1) by offering perfection in exchange for performing a few trivial rituals with regularity, and 2) by sanctifying tribal barbarity.
This is why Islam cannot move beyond the period of its creation in the Middle Ages.
EDIT: I can see the current behaviors of western governments including America doing something similar to keep us stuck in the rudimentary world as it exist today.
This POS is a coward. He did this at a place where He felt safe. That tells Me We ceded Dearborn to the enemy.
They ain’t doing it in Fort Worth, TEXAS. Why? Because there’d be repercussions.
Tell Him to go shout this in an airport and see what happens.
He’s a worthless coward. Comfortable in America.
Edit: this makes Him a domestic enemy.
Yeah, when I saw the guy was in Dearborn, I looked to see if Rashida Tlaib was part of the chant…
So what is to be done with this guy? America’s incredible liberalism seems unable to mitigate his fanaticism.
Not “unable,” but “unwilling.”
We are too stained by our legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, homophobia, Native American genocide, transphobia, misogyny and overall whiteness to judge much less oppose those who hate us. As long as kids are using Zinn’s textbook to prepare to attend expensive campus cult factories, we are pretty helpless.
A return to common sense and a basic appreciation of what we have would be more than enough to generate pushback. Instead, the silly bugger will not face any criticism on campus nor many Americans asking him WTF. His audience and coterie of ME aliens with or without visas will not be booted for sheer undesirability. Public figures will not uniformly denounce the rhetoric and his fan club would begin to fear isolation and deserved ostracization. That the President of the United States actually feels obliged to kiss the asses of Hamas cheerleaders is an embarrassment of the highest magnitude.
Kick him out . . .