[Rhodes22-list] Religion:

Bill Effros bill at effros.com
Wed Oct 25 10:11:00 EDT 2006


The only remaining rule on this list is that we don't discuss religion.

Are the Christo-Fascists suggesting that we drop this rule?

Please advise.

Bill Effros

Hank wrote:
> I am forwarding an e-mail from my Uncle Neil, who has lived extensively
> overseas.  In it, he forwards a column by Stephen Browne.  I believe it
> succinctly sums up why we have some many problems dealing with the Arab
> world.  This is not a George Bush issue, it is an American issue as every
> president has tried to deal with Arabs using our logic and way of 
> thinking
> and it just does not work.
>
>
> Hank
>
> I have lived in Iran and Muslim/Arab dominated Eritrea (Ethiopia at the
> time) and can state that this guy is right on. The only thing he did not
> cover adequately is the overwhelming inferiority complex most Arabs 
> and Arab
> governments have. By the way everything he says applies to Iran as 
> well even
> though they are not Arabs.
>
>
>
> Neil F. Shearman
>
> Dhimmitude is the status that Islamic law, the Sharia, mandates for
> non-Muslims, primarily Jews and Christians. Dhimmis, "protected 
> people," are
> free to practice their religion in a Sharia regime, but are made 
> subject to
> a number of humiliating regulations designed to enforce the Qur'an's 
> command
> that they "feel themselves subdued" (Sura 9:29). This denial of 
> equality of
> rights and dignity remains part of the Sharia, and, as such, are part 
> of the
> law that global jihadists are laboring to impose everywhere, 
> ultimately on
> the entire human race.
>
> 9/11/2001 - We Must NEVER Forget!
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Observations on Arabs
>
> Column   by Stephen Browne - *Sep 29, 2006*
>
> **
>
> Journalist Jill Carroll is back home now, and
> *detailing*<http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0814/p01s01-woiq.html>her
> experiences as a captive of the jihadists in Iraq in the
> *Christian Science Monitor*.
>
> I'm sure the details will prove fascinating, but the upshot of what 
> she has
> learned is that the Islamists are --- gasp --- different from us! 
> Furthermore, I
> believe that she's beginning to suspect that they are really not very 
> nice
> people.
>
> Since the beginning of the Iraq phase of this conflict of civilizations,
> I've experienced the teeth-grinding frustration of watching both pro- and
> anti- Iraq sides make the exact same mistake --- that of supposing 
> that these
> people are basically Americans in funny costumes. In this respect, George
> Bush and Michael Moore are equally clueless, as Jill Carroll 
> apparently was
> as well.
>
> I went to live and work in Saudi Arabia in 1998, and I "made my year" as
> expats there put it. That phrase means that I actually stuck out the 
> whole
> year, instead of "running" from my contract, an occurrence so common that
> you only have to say "he did a runner" to explain why someone isn't 
> showing
> up for work anymore.
>
> And while my experience wasn't nearly as unpleasant as Jill Carroll's, I
> could have told her a thing or two before she went to Iraq armed with her
> overflowing good will.
>
> I went to the Kingdom with a certain sympathy for Arab grievances and a
> belief that America had earned a lot of hostility from "blowback" from 
> our
> ham-handed interventionist foreign policy and support for Israel.
>
> I came back with the gloomy opinion that over the long run we are 
> going to
> have to hammer these people hard to get them to quit messing with us.
>
> So, with the caveat that one of the first things I learned was that 
> the term
> "Arab" covers a lot of territory, here are some observations and some
> tentative conclusions about Arabs, particularly Arabs from the oil 
> states,
> about why we have misunderstood each other to the point that we are 
> fighting
> a war with some of them and angering the rest of them. I suspect that 
> many
> of these also apply to Iranian Islamists, but I have never been there and
> note that Iranians are not Arabs and have a different cultural history.
>
> *1) They don't think the same way we do.*
>
> No, I mean THEY REALLY DON'T THINK THE SAME WAY WE DO. Yes, yes, I 
> know we
> are all human and share the same human nature (perhaps the most 
> disastrous
> mistake of Marxism was the denial of this elementary fact). But within 
> the
> scope of that shared human nature, there are a lot of different ways 
> to be
> human.
>
> We Americans have a basically open attitude to our fellow human beings 
> and
> sometimes forget this. Combined with the fact that most Americans are
> linguistic idiots, we tend to assume that anyone who learns to speak 
> English
> learns to think like us.
>
> *2) When you meet them in just the right circumstances, they are a very
> likable people.*
>
> Arabs are often easy to like, but difficult to respect --- as opposed to
> Israelis, who are often difficult to like but impossible not to respect.
>> From their nomadic heritage they have a tradition of generosity and
> hospitality to guests that warms the heart.
>
> Arab shopkeepers have a talent for making you feel guilty that you didn't
> buy anything (once you get past a dislike of having them lay hands on 
> you).
> Haggling is a social grace with them and when you ask the price, and 
> agree
> to the first one quoted, they will often come down on the price just 
> out of
> pity for your social ineptness.
>
> This does not in the least affect the fact that no friendship with you is
> ever going to remotely equal the obligations they have for their family,
> tribe, or the community of the Believers.
>
> *3) Their values are fundamentally different from ours; their 
> self-esteem is
> derived from a different source. *
>
> And you know what? Theirs is PHONY. Yes I know, I'm making a cultural 
> value
> judgment, the cardinal sin when I was a grad student in Anthropology. 
> With
> us, the most important sources of self-esteem are useful work and the 
> love
> of a good woman. We value being good at something that requires skill 
> (even
> a hobby) and being of primary importance to somebody just because you are
> who you are.
>
> Work for them is something to be avoided. The basic forms of work: making
> stuff, growing stuff, and moving stuff around, is taken care of by a 
> class
> of indentured servants, usually non-Arab Muslims from the Third World, 
> and,
> even today, by outright slaves. The Kingdom is a modern country that
> abolished slavery in 1967, but old expats have reported seeing slave
> auctions as late as 1981.
>
> On one occasion a student of mine asked me, "Teacher, what do you call 
> a man
> who can be sold?" (Excellent use of the passive voice, I was proud of 
> him.)
> I explained, "He is called a slave, the condition is called slavery, the
> verb is to enslave."
>
> Later I had occasion to ask them about the headsman, the fellow who cuts
> heads and hands off in the chop-chop square in front of the mosque on
> Fridays. The reason I asked was that from my studies I knew that in 
> tribal
> societies converting from a tribal or feudal system into a system of 
> common
> laws, a man condemned to death by a court of law must often be 
> executed by a
> member of his own tribe or a complete outsider so that the execution does
> not spark a blood feud.
>
> In the Kingdom, the headsman is usually a Sudanese. My students 
> explained,
> "Yes teacher, he's a slave." i.e. he's a person of no importance and
> therefore outside the web of obligations of vengeance.
>
> The point being, in a slave society, work is not honorable (as De
> Tocqueville pointed out) and cannot be a source of self-worth.
>
> "Of conjugal love they know nothing." (Thomas Jefferson on the French
> aristocracy.) In a land of arranged marriages, where the whole society is
> geared towards a strict segregation of the sexes and women are at least
> semi-chattels, romantic love is rare --- and greatly desired.
>
> In the Kingdom I found a few students with a consuming interest in 
> romantic
> poetry, whom I had to teach very discretely. Most of them were just 
> obsessed
> with sex, however. And interestingly, when visiting the West or the
> fleshpots of Bahrain, they are said to have a tendency to fall in love 
> with
> the prostitutes they patronize.
>
> Without honorable work, romantic love, or any accomplishments not
> overshadowed by those the West, their sense of self-worth comes from 
> being
> the possessors of the One True Religion. And Allah doesn't seem to be
> delivering on his promises of being exalted above the unbelievers these
> days.
>
> On the plus side, they are willing to spare you and absorb you into their
> community as a respected member if you convert to the One True 
> Religion. The
> Brotherhood of Believers is a reality in the lands of Islam, and while it
> sometimes falls short of the ideal (as does our democratic ideal) it is a
> reality, and in its way admirable.
>
> *4) They do not think of obligations as running both ways.*
>
> With us, contractual and moral obligations tend to be equal and 
> reciprocal.
> They don't see it that way. The obligations of the superior to the 
> inferior
> do not equal those of the inferior to the superior. Obligations within a
> family or clan outweigh all others.
>
> That is why we had to take care not to sit members of the same clan near
> each other during exams. If one asks another for help, he has to give 
> it, in
> spite of promises to the school, even when the clansman is a total 
> stranger.
>
>
> Obligations to other believers outweigh all obligations to unbelievers 
> and
> especially when the believers are fellow-Arabs. And in contracts with
> unbelievers, the obligations of the Believer to the kaffir are not 
> equal to
> the obligations of the kaffir to the Believer.
>
> Consider that Muslims in England have quite un-self-consciously demanded
> that a pub near a mosque be shut down as offensive to their religion 
> --- in
> spite of the fact that the pub had precedence by six hundred years! Or 
> that
> they demand the right to broadcast the prayer call on loudspeakers in 
> London
> while it is illegal to have a church at all in the Kingdom.
>
> *5) Not only can they not build the infrastructure of a modern 
> society, they
> can't maintain it either. *
>
> The very concept of "maintenance" is foreign to them. This is what drives
> the foreign instructors in the Gulf absolutely mad. The per-capita 
> richest
> countries in the world resemble Eastern Europe or Latin America in the
> tackiness and run-down appearance of the buildings and streets.
>
> An electronics technician new to the Kingdom once told me how his 
> first job
> was to inspect a junction box in the desert. He had to pry it open with a
> crowbar as it had evidently not been opened since it had been installed
> several years earlier.
>
> This is expressed in the inshallah philosophy, "If God wills it." A
> Palestinian friend of mine explained to me that even the weather 
> forecaster
> will qualify his prediction, "It will rain tomorrow. Inshallah." Or, 
> "I will
> meet you tomorrow, inshallah." (But God understands that I am a very
> unreliable person.)
>
> I remember giving a pep talk to my students before a crucial exam, 
> "You are
> all going to pass the exam, right?" "Inshallah teacher." "No, no!" I
> shouted, "No inshallah. Study!"
>
>
>
> *6) In warfare, we think they are sneaky cowards and they think we are
> hypocrites. *
>
> In our civilization, when two men get ready to fight, either seriously or
> just "woofing," what do they say? Some variation of "I'm going to kick 
> your
> butt."
>
> Here's what I heard in the Kingdom, "Hey, don't mess with me, or someday
> you'll get a knife in the back." I'm not saying that wouldn't happen 
> to you
> in the west, but most men would be ashamed to make a threat of that 
> nature.
>
> We don't understand that direct shock battle is not necessarily the 
> law of
> nature. When overwhelming force is brought to bear on them, they become
> cringing and obsequious. To put it bluntly, they lie their heads off 
> to get
> you to turn your back on them.
>
> Try to see it from their point of view --- how else do you expect them 
> to act
> when you have the overwhelming force? You expect them to meet you on 
> equal
> terms when the situation is so unequal? What other tactics are 
> available but
> prevarication and delay, followed by a sneak attack?
>
> Folks, what we call "terrorism" is quite close to the historically normal
> way of warfare among these people.
>
> *7) In rhetoric, they don't mean to be taken seriously and they don't
> understand when we do. *
>
> Thus, an ultimatum is often not taken seriously and reality comes as a
> shock. Like many other Mediterranean peoples, Arabs don't seem to mind
> making a scene in public and have a high blown sense of drama.
>
> Paul Harvey once described how he had spent the Suez Crisis hiding 
> under the
> bed in his hotel room because of the blood-curdling radio broadcasts, 
> before
> he learned that Arabs talk like that when they're arguing over a taxi. 
> "This
> is my taxi and I will defend it to the death!" "You lie, it's mine and
> rivers of blood will flow in the street before I give up my taxi!"
>
> An Arab will scream at you, get into your personal space and sometimes 
> kick
> dirt on your shoe --- and then react with utter surprise when an American
> comes up and decks him. "What did I do?" To say the least, this makes
> negotiations difficult.
>
> *8) They don't place the same value on an abstract conception of Truth 
> as we
> do; they routinely believe things of breathtaking absurdity. *
>
> I cannot begin to tell you some of the things I've heard from Gulf 
> Arabs or
> read in the English language press in the Kingdom. "The Jews want Medina
> back." (Medina was a Jewish city in the time of the Prophet.) *The 
> Protocols
> of the Elders of Zion *has been turned into an immensely popular 
> miniseries
> on Egyptian TV.
>
> The 'Blood Libel' (the medieval myth that Jews need the blood of 
> non-Jewish
> babies to celebrate Passover) is widely reported in the Arab press, and
> widely believed. Allah will, of course, replenish the oil beneath Arabia
> when it runs out.
>
> I've been assured, by well-educated and otherwise sensible people, that
> Winston Churchill was Jewish and that Anthony Quinn had been 
> blacklisted and
> would never work again after making *Lion of the Desert* (just before he
> made that turkey with Kevin Costner).
>
> *9) They do not have the same notion of cause and effect as we do. *
>
> This involves some seriously weird implications about other people being
> responsible for their misery because they ill-wished them. I've read 
> in the
> English-language press of the Kingdom serious admonitions against using
> Black Magic to win an advantage in a dispute with a neighbor. The 
> columnist
> did not deny the efficacy of Black Magic, he just said it's forbidden 
> to use
> it.
>
> On one occasion I was trying to explain the concept of "myth" to them 
> and I
> used the example of the djinn. I wasn't getting through to them at all 
> and
> was concerned that I had mangled the pronunciation of the word when it
> dawned on me that the reason they didn't understand what I was getting 
> at,
> was that they had no doubt that the djinn were real.
>
> *10) We take for granted that we are a dominant civilization still on the
> way up. They are acutely aware that they are a civilization on the 
> skids. *
>
> Anyone who looks at the surviving architecture of Moorish Spain can tell
> that Islamic civilization has seen better days. There was a time when
> cultural transmission between Islam and the west went overwhelmingly from
> them to us. (Note the recent discoveries of Sufi symbols engraved on the
> structural members of European cathedrals.)
>
> Now the situation is reversed, and it is humiliating for them.
>
> *11) We think that everybody has a right to their own point of view; they
> think that that idea is not only self-evidently absurd, but evil. *
>
> In the west, and America more than anyplace else, we have internalized 
> the
> notion that everyone has a right to their own opinion, and that said 
> opinion
> is perfectly valid for them. When we meet a people who think that that 
> idea
> is insane and evil, we are sometimes left in the absurd position of
> defending their stance as "perfectly valid for them."
>
> It doesn't work that way for Arabs. God's Truth is laid out in some 
> detail
> in the Koran, and not to believe it is a sin. Yes, in America you can 
> find
> lots of Christian Fundamentalists who believe that God will cast you into
> hell for holding the wrong opinions about Him, but even those who 
> would make
> their religion into an established church seldom desire the level of
> detailed enforcement as the Kingdom does or the Taliban did.
>
> *12) Our civilization is destroying theirs. We cannot share a world in
> peace. They understand this; we have yet to learn it. *
>
> Another culturally-imposed blindness we have is the notion that everybody
> can get along with enough good will. There is absolutely no evidence to
> support this and a great deal to oppose it.
>
> Can the subjugation of women coexist with western civilization and 
> western
> media ubiquitous throughout the world? Can a pluralistic and tolerant
> society be governed by Islamic law? Can a modern economy exist where
> interest is forbidden and many forms of business risk-taking are 
> considered
> gambling, and thus forbidden?
>
> Can a society that educates its young men by a process of rote recitation
> produce critically thinking, technically educated men to build and 
> operate a
> modern economy? Can you even teach elementary concepts of maintenance 
> to a
> people who believe that anything that happens is *inshalla *(As God wills
> it)?
>
> To compete, or even just survive in the world they must become more 
> like us
> and less like themselves --- and they know this.
>
>
> *Stephen Browne 
> <http://www.theatlasphere.com/directory/profile.php?id=2487>
> ** is a writer, editor, and teacher of English as a Second Language and
> martial arts. He has been living and working in Eastern Europe since 
> 1991,
> though currently he is at the University of Oklahoma pursuing advanced
> course work in journalism. He is the founder of the Liberty English Camp,
> held annually in Lithuania, which brings students from all over Eastern
> Europe for intensive English study using texts important to the 
> history of
> political liberty and free markets. He also keeps an up-to-date
> **blog<http://rantsand.blogspot.com/>
> **.*
>
>
> On 10/25/06, Brad Haslett <flybrad at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Here's something you didn't read in the mainstream media.   Quds Day
>> in Iran, is a holiday started by the Ayatollah Khomeini, the  guy who
>> was in power when our hostages were taken a quarter of a century ago.
>> Remember, the crisis that was led by the current Iranian 'leader'.
>> Here is what he had to say leading up to the 'holiday'. - Brad
>>
>> President Ahmadinejad gave a series of speeches leading up to and on
>> Quds Day. At an Iftar address on October 14, he discussed his
>> "connection with God" and said: "The president of America is like us.
>> That is, he too is inspired ... but [his] inspiration is of the
>> satanic kind. Satan gives inspiration to the president of America."
>>
>> Mr. Ahmadinejad delivered his Quds Day speech under a banner that
>> read, "Israel must be wiped off the face of the world." He described
>> the holiday as "a day for confrontation between the Islamic faith with
>> the global arrogance."
>>
>> In another speech, he said Israel was "doomed" and promised that the
>> Israeli "regime will be gone, definitely."
>>
>> The words "the Zionist regime is a cancerous gland that needs to be
>> uprooted" were written in a communiqué from the Iranian Foreign
>> Ministry in honor of the holiday. Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki
>> held a meeting for other Islamic countries' ambassadors to Iran and
>> told them that Israel's existence would be shattered and that death
>> bells were tolling for the Zionists. At the meeting, the Palestinian
>> Arab ambassador to Tehran, Salah Zawawi, said, "The day for the
>> liberation of Quds Day is close at hand."
>> __________________________________________________
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