"This is What Democracy Looks Like."

[Choada_Boy]

"This is What Democracy Looks Like."

[JayB]

Unclenching fist alert...

[ivan]

fistfights in the buffet line?

[olyclimber]

this looks to be a good time to be in Iran if you're a fan of riding around on a motorcycle with a billyclub.

[Bug]

What's the big deal?

At least he wasn't getting a blow job.

[Fairweather]

"This is What Democracy Looks Like."

 

Huh? You're kidding, right? The Iranian election is a sham--no matter who is "declared" the winner. Even you likely know this. As for the "reform" candidate--Mr Hossein Mousavi--he was one of Ayatollah Khomeini's top henchmen in the early 1980's and personally ordered the execution of over 7000 political prisoners (Kind of a post-Islamic revolution version of Che Guevara). Until the people of Iran somehow tear themselves away from the most ardent practitioners of the most fucked up religion on the planet there will be no democracy in that nation. But I'm glad you're celebrating.

[olyclimber]

well lets be honest, democracy is pretty messy. that is, unless it is really facism. all these jackasses with differing opinions. why can't we just pick the right opinion and make that the rule of law?

[Dechristo]

...the most fucked up religion on the planet ...

 

snake handlers

a thousand crazy Hindi practitioners

Moonie mass marriage

bilkers of the desperately poor

 

...there are just so many varieties to choose from!

[Fairweather]

...but none of religious zealots in your pictures are wearing bombs or blowing up school children or beating women.

[Bug]

No.

Our military does that for us.

It's great to be so insulated from our actions.

[ivan]

...but none of religious zealots in your pictures are wearing bombs or blowing up school children or beating women.

how about this entry for the hindus and sikks?

[Fairweather]

Um...1984. Anything more current? I suppose you could post recent Tamil Tiger exploits, but they are largely socialist/secular--and now beaten.

[ivan]

Um...1984. Anything more current? I suppose you could post recent Tamil Tiger exploits, but they are largely socialist/secular--and now beaten.

your "most fucked up religion on the planet" award must take into account the entire history of the religion, no? the recent outbreak of muslim insanity can be balanced against a great deal of stabilty and reasonability in the previous centuries.

 

at any rate, no matter what they profess, most folks' true religion is greed, and that is no doubt a better candidate for your vaunted accolade

[tvashtarkatena]

Iranians do love to party.

 

All deist religions are equally fucked up. Individual practitioners vary along those lines, not the doctrines themselves. Once a cult doctrine is established, there's no telling what it will become over time, given the limitless kookiness of angry, hairless monkeys.

 

Fully militarized riot police: The 21st Century's iconic symbol, and we are it's poster child.

 

 

Edited June 17, 2009 by tvashtarkatena

[olyclimber]

[video:youtube]yTpiwngOg7I

[JayB]

Um...1984. Anything more current? I suppose you could post recent Tamil Tiger exploits, but they are largely socialist/secular--and now beaten.

your "most fucked up religion on the planet" award must take into account the entire history of the religion, no? the recent outbreak of muslim insanity can be balanced against a great deal of stabilty and reasonability in the previous centuries.

 

at any rate, no matter what they profess, most folks' true religion is greed, and that is no doubt a better candidate for your vaunted accolade

 

I think it's worth taking the historical track record into account, and I'm more than happy to give Muslims credit for being less barbaric than Europeans during the crusades, etc - but there's only so far take your moral accounting before you start placing modern-day Swedes on an equal footing with the Taliban because of their propensity to rampage and pillage in the 11th and 12th centuries...

[j_b]

Be careful or you are going to end up acknowledging social progress. It'd then be difficult to advocate returning to no-laws just to be really "free"

[tvashtarkatena]

Um...1984. Anything more current? I suppose you could post recent Tamil Tiger exploits, but they are largely socialist/secular--and now beaten.

your "most fucked up religion on the planet" award must take into account the entire history of the religion, no? the recent outbreak of muslim insanity can be balanced against a great deal of stabilty and reasonability in the previous centuries.

 

at any rate, no matter what they profess, most folks' true religion is greed, and that is no doubt a better candidate for your vaunted accolade

 

I think it's worth taking the historical track record into account, and I'm more than happy to give Muslims credit for being less barbaric than Europeans during the crusades, etc - but there's only so far take your moral accounting before you start placing modern-day Swedes on an equal footing with the Taliban because of their propensity to rampage and pillage in the 11th and 12th centuries...

 

Not very pithy, I know, but it's probably helpful to remember that, even if many tens of thousands of Muslims are violently radicalized (and that would be generous), that would represent less than 1/1000th of a percent of the total worldwide population of 1.4+ billion.

 

These evildoers are hardly an accurate representation of the faith in general. If you think they are, then by the same statistical logic all Americans are homocidal hermaphrodites.

Edited June 17, 2009 by tvashtarkatena

[KaskadskyjKozak]

by the same statistical logic all Americans are homocidal hermaphrodites.

 

Holy Shit! I think you are on to something!

[JayB]

Um...1984. Anything more current? I suppose you could post recent Tamil Tiger exploits, but they are largely socialist/secular--and now beaten.

your "most fucked up religion on the planet" award must take into account the entire history of the religion, no? the recent outbreak of muslim insanity can be balanced against a great deal of stabilty and reasonability in the previous centuries.

 

at any rate, no matter what they profess, most folks' true religion is greed, and that is no doubt a better candidate for your vaunted accolade

 

I think it's worth taking the historical track record into account, and I'm more than happy to give Muslims credit for being less barbaric than Europeans during the crusades, etc - but there's only so far take your moral accounting before you start placing modern-day Swedes on an equal footing with the Taliban because of their propensity to rampage and pillage in the 11th and 12th centuries...

 

Not very pithy, I know, but it's probably helpful to remember that, even if many tens of thousands of Muslims are violently radicalized (and that would be generous), that would represent less than 1/1000th of a percent of the total worldwide population of 1.4+ billion.

 

These evildoers are hardly an accurate representation of the faith in general. If you think they are, then by the same statistical logic all Americans are homocidal hermaphrodites.

 

I personally think that the more salient metric is the percentage of all deliberate ideologically driven attacks on/slayings of civilians over the course of the past 30 years that have been perpetrated by Muslims relative to all other faiths.

 

It's also worth examining the motives of the people committing these attacks as they themselves understand and justify them, the long established ideological/theological infrastructure that recruits, funds, sustains, motivates and posthumously justifies them.

 

In the end, the most effective means of dispelling a connection between Islam and retrograde barbarism in the minds of non-Muslims will be a vigorous, sustained, public repudiation of all of the above by the other 1.39999999 billion Muslims. I suspect that most of the non-Muslim world is eagerly awaiting such a movement and will greet it with open arms when and if it ever materializes.

 

Not about Muslims as people, but about an ideology that claims their faith as the central motivation for what they believe and do. Hopefully they'll start to listen to guys like Tawfik Hamid and respond accordingly:

 

http://www.pointofinquiry.org/tawfik_hamid_my_life_as_a_muslim_terrorist/

"Tawfik Hamid, an expert on Islamic terrorism, joined the Islamic group Muslim GI (al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya) in Egypt, while in medical school. His colleagues in the terror movement included Al Zawaherri, then a friend with whom Tawfik used to pray, and now the number 2 person of Al Qaeda. Eventually Dr. Hamid questioned the feelings of hatred and impulses to violence that his participation in extremist Islam was fomenting within him. He became a physician, and also a scholar of Islamic texts. When he began to preach in Mosques to promote a message of peace instead of violence and hatred, he himself became a target of the Islamic extremists who had previously been his friends. They threatened his life, forcing him and his family to flee Egypt , and then Saudi Arabia . His appearance on Fox TV in early 2006 and his testimony at the first major Intelligence Summit in Washington have further established him as a leading authority on global terror movements. He explains why extremist Islam is far more prevalent and poses a far more serious threat than most Americans appreciate to our economy, ecology, and national security.

 

In this discussion with D.J. Grothe, Tawfik Hamid discusses his experiences with extremist Islam and the Al Quada affiliated organization he joined, the question of moderate Islam and moderate Muslim organizations such as the Council on Islamic American Relations. He also explores the dire need for Islam to be reformed, and the recent CFI-sponsored Secular Islam Summit in St. Petersburg, Florida.

 

Also in this episode, Ibn Warraq reads the Declaration from the Secular Islam Summit, which has received worldwide press and grassroots attention."

[JayB]

Be careful or you are going to end up acknowledging social progress. It'd then be difficult to advocate returning to no-laws just to be really "free"

 

Classical liberalism = anarchist? Really? Interesting perspective.

 

Handing over unchecked power to the state, even if it happens to be ruled by a clique of leftist intellectuals with the best of intentions, seems a touch dubious as the best way to promote, much less secure anything that could be described as social progress, but I'd be more than happy to read any defense of this idea that you care to offer.

[tvashtarkatena]

By the same logic, I think we should consider the number of civilian 'collateral damage' casualties perpetrated by each nation's military, and compare this figure to your measure, then demand a repudiation from that nation's population.

 

Or, we could consider the number of murders committed, by nationality, and demand a repudiation of violence from that population.

 

Or, we could measure the number of bankruptcies in first world countries due to the UNIQUE lack of a national health care program, the decry the systemic cruelty of such a result.

 

Or, we could measure the total dollar amount of military weapons bought and sold, by nationality, and demand a repudiation of those purchases/sales by that population.

 

Or we could...

 

...oh, wait....

 

Yeah, I guess our shit stinks too, huh?

 

Oh well, just another day in the life of an angry, hairless monkey. Personally, I don't take any responsibility whatsoever for the behavior of fellow atheists with buddhist overtones, so I'm really not at all sure why anyone would think that muslims at large bear any responsibility to 'control' (good luck) the behavior of violent extremists, many of whom aren't genuine, practicing muslims, anyway. But I'm sure that if the muslim world were to rise up in one voice, as they have done so many times in the past, and write that angry letter, all those car bombings would certainly cease immediately. After all, muslim extremists have been waiting for their bretheran (who comprise a majority of their targets) to express their dissatisfaction.

 

Like a party balloon, your logic is seamless.

[JayB]

Um...1984. Anything more current? I suppose you could post recent Tamil Tiger exploits, but they are largely socialist/secular--and now beaten.

your "most fucked up religion on the planet" award must take into account the entire history of the religion, no? the recent outbreak of muslim insanity can be balanced against a great deal of stabilty and reasonability in the previous centuries.

 

at any rate, no matter what they profess, most folks' true religion is greed, and that is no doubt a better candidate for your vaunted accolade

 

I think it's worth taking the historical track record into account, and I'm more than happy to give Muslims credit for being less barbaric than Europeans during the crusades, etc - but there's only so far take your moral accounting before you start placing modern-day Swedes on an equal footing with the Taliban because of their propensity to rampage and pillage in the 11th and 12th centuries...

 

Not very pithy, I know, but it's probably helpful to remember that, even if many tens of thousands of Muslims are violently radicalized (and that would be generous), that would represent less than 1/1000th of a percent of the total worldwide population of 1.4+ billion.

 

These evildoers are hardly an accurate representation of the faith in general. If you think they are, then by the same statistical logic all Americans are homocidal hermaphrodites.

 

"The Trouble With Islam

Sadly, mainstream Muslim teaching accepts and promotes violence.

 

by TAWFIK HAMID

Tuesday, April 3, 2007 12:01 A.M. EDT

 

Not many years ago the brilliant Orientalist, Bernard Lewis, published a short history of the Islamic world's decline, entitled "What Went Wrong?" Astonishingly, there was, among many Western "progressives," a vocal dislike for the title. It is a false premise, these critics protested. They ignored Mr. Lewis's implicit statement that things have been, or could be, right.

 

But indeed, there is much that is clearly wrong with the Islamic world. Women are stoned to death and undergo clitorectomies. Gays hang from the gallows under the approving eyes of the proponents of Shariah, the legal code of Islam. Sunni and Shia massacre each other daily in Iraq. Palestinian mothers teach 3-year-old boys and girls the ideal of martyrdom. One would expect the orthodox Islamic establishment to evade or dismiss these complaints, but less happily, the non-Muslim priests of enlightenment in the West have come, actively and passively, to the Islamists' defense.

 

These "progressives" frequently cite the need to examine "root causes." In this they are correct: Terrorism is only the manifestation of a disease and not the disease itself. But the root-causes are quite different from what they think. As a former member of Jemaah Islamiya, a group led by al Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, I know firsthand that the inhumane teaching in Islamist ideology can transform a young, benevolent mind into that of a terrorist. Without confronting the ideological roots of radical Islam it will be impossible to combat it. While there are many ideological "rootlets" of Islamism, the main tap root has a name--Salafism, or Salafi Islam, a violent, ultra-conservative version of the religion.

 

It is vital to grasp that traditional and even mainstream Islamic teaching accepts and promotes violence. Shariah, for example, allows apostates to be killed, permits beating women to discipline them, seeks to subjugate non-Muslims to Islam as dhimmis and justifies declaring war to do so. It exhorts good Muslims to exterminate the Jews before the "end of days." The near deafening silence of the Muslim majority against these barbaric practices is evidence enough that there is something fundamentally wrong.

 

The grave predicament we face in the Islamic world is the virtual lack of approved, theologically rigorous interpretations of Islam that clearly challenge the abusive aspects of Shariah. Unlike Salafism, more liberal branches of Islam, such as Sufism, typically do not provide the essential theological base to nullify the cruel proclamations of their Salafist counterparts. And so, for more than 20 years I have been developing and working to establish a theologically-rigorous Islam that teaches peace.

 

Yet it is ironic and discouraging that many non-Muslim, Western intellectuals--who unceasingly claim to support human rights--have become obstacles to reforming Islam. Political correctness among Westerners obstructs unambiguous criticism of Shariah's inhumanity. They find socioeconomic or political excuses for Islamist terrorism such as poverty, colonialism, discrimination or the existence of Israel. What incentive is there for Muslims to demand reform when Western "progressives" pave the way for Islamist barbarity? Indeed, if the problem is not one of religious beliefs, it leaves one to wonder why Christians who live among Muslims under identical circumstances refrain from contributing to wide-scale, systematic campaigns of terror.

 

Politicians and scholars in the West have taken up the chant that Islamic extremism is caused by the Arab-Israeli conflict. This analysis cannot convince any rational person that the Islamist murder of over 150,000 innocent people in Algeria--which happened in the last few decades--or their slaying of hundreds of Buddhists in Thailand, or the brutal violence between Sunni and Shia in Iraq could have anything to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict.

 

Western feminists duly fight in their home countries for equal pay and opportunity, but seemingly ignore, under a façade of cultural relativism, that large numbers of women in the Islamic world live under threat of beating, execution and genital mutilation, or cannot vote, drive cars and dress as they please.

 

The tendency of many Westerners to restrict themselves to self-criticism further obstructs reformation in Islam. Americans demonstrate against the war in Iraq, yet decline to demonstrate against the terrorists who kidnap innocent people and behead them. Similarly, after the Madrid train bombings, millions of Spanish citizens demonstrated against their separatist organization, ETA. But once the demonstrators realized that Muslims were behind the terror attacks they suspended the demonstrations. This example sent a message to radical Islamists to continue their violent methods.

 

Western appeasement of their Muslim communities has exacerbated the problem. During the four-month period after the publication of the Muhammad cartoons in a Danish magazine, there were comparatively few violent demonstrations by Muslims. Within a few days of the Danish magazine's formal apology, riots erupted throughout the world. The apology had been perceived by Islamists as weakness and concession.

 

Worst of all, perhaps, is the anti-Americanism among many Westerners. It is a resentment so strong, so deep-seated, so rooted in personal identity, that it has led many, consciously or unconsciously, to morally support America's enemies.

 

Progressives need to realize that radical Islam is based on an antiliberal system. They need to awaken to the inhumane policies and practices of Islamists around the world. They need to realize that Islamism spells the death of liberal values. And they must not take for granted the respect for human rights and dignity that we experience in America, and indeed, the West, today.

 

Well-meaning interfaith dialogues with Muslims have largely been fruitless. Participants must demand--but so far haven't--that Muslim organizations and scholars specifically and unambiguously denounce violent Salafi components in their mosques and in the media. Muslims who do not vocally oppose brutal Shariah decrees should not be considered "moderates."

 

All of this makes the efforts of Muslim reformers more difficult. When Westerners make politically-correct excuses for Islamism, it actually endangers the lives of reformers and in many cases has the effect of suppressing their voices.

 

Tolerance does not mean toleration of atrocities under the umbrella of relativism. It is time for all of us in the free world to face the reality of Salafi Islam or the reality of radical Islam will continue to face us.

 

Dr. Hamid, a onetime member of Jemaah Islamiya, an Islamist terrorist group, is a medical doctor and Muslim reformer living in the West. "

 

 

[j_b]

Be careful or you are going to end up acknowledging social progress. It'd then be difficult to advocate returning to no-laws just to be really "free"

 

Classical liberalism = anarchist? Really? Interesting perspective.

 

Well, classical liberalism is an elusive beast since it is based on the ideas of the enlightenment, which are shared by most political currents; however, Laissex Faire (or economic liberalism) is often referred to as anarcho-capitalism.

 

Handing over unchecked power to the state,

 

Are you planning on doing this because I haven't heard anybody, aside from the war OF terror folks, advocating something close to "handing over unchecked power to the state". Must be one of your ususal strawmen.

 

even if it happens to be ruled by a clique of leftist intellectuals with the best of intentions,

 

These aren't the agents of social progress. Populations are. Ergo, another strawman.

 

seems a touch dubious as the best way to promote, much less secure anything that could be described as social progress, but I'd be more than happy to read any defense of this idea that you care to offer.

 

You really want me to defend the idea that people organized in societies with laws beat back the pillagers and murderers?

[tvashtarkatena]

Be careful or you are going to end up acknowledging social progress. It'd then be difficult to advocate returning to no-laws just to be really "free"

 

Classical liberalism = anarchist? Really? Interesting perspective.

 

Handing over unchecked power to the state...seems a touch dubious as the best way to promote, much less secure anything that could be described as social progress, but I'd be more than happy to read any defense of this idea that you care to offer.

 

You and your fellows (politically speaking) have already done this and cheered themselves for it. Congratulations...and thanks from the rest of us.