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Home » Fanaticism inherent in Islam itself: Hirsi Ali reviews Lee Harris

Fanaticism inherent in Islam itself: Hirsi Ali reviews Lee Harris

The New Neo Posted on by

Surprisingly, the NY Times has published a lengthy and somewhat favorable review of Lee Harris’s latest book about the threat Islam presents to the West, entitled The Suicide of Reason.

Hirsi Ali was the Times’s interesting choice as reviewer. Raised originally in Islamic Somalia but spending her teen years in Kenya and exposed to Western thought and culture, she became enamored early on with Enlightenment ideas such as the hegemony of reason (one of the conduits of which for Hirsi Ali was Nancy Drew books. with their combination of feminism, logic, and derring-do, characteristics her later life included).

The main thesis of Harris’s book is that Islam has not just been temporarily “hijacked” by the more extreme of its fanatics, as though the most restrictive sects of Christianity or Judaism had taken control of their respective religions. He asserts that fanaticism and world-domination are basic tenets of Islam. This is, of course, a familiar idea to those who are in the habit of perusing the blogosphere.

Harris goes on to point out that Islam and the West have come to represent almost opposite cultures in terms of fanaticism. The West’s Enlightenment emphasis on reason, and on religious and intellectual tolerance, is one of its great strengths. But Harris writes that this attitude of tolerance, taken as far as it has been today in many areas of the West, has become a weakness in fighting against this particular enemy.

Hirsi Ali disagrees not with Harris’s setup and description of the problem, only with his solution. I have not read his book, so I don’t know whether she is characterizing his work fairly. But she says that he incorrectly asserts that reason itself is the problem.

Hirsi Ali writes:

….it is not reason that accommodates and encourages the persistent segregation and tribalism of immigrant Muslim populations in the West. It is Romanticism. Multiculturalism and moral relativism promote an idealization of tribal life and have shown themselves to be impervious to empirical criticism.

It’s hard for me to believe that a thinker such as Harris fails to understand this rather obvious fact, nor to value reason itself. Again, I’m handicapped by not having read his book. But my guess is that what Harris is really saying is “reason is not enough,” and that the Enlightenment value of tolerance has led to the conundrum that tolerance of violent fanaticism—tolerance of intolerance itself—could result in a potentially suicidal dead end for Enlightenment thought.

This idea of the overarching value of tolerance originates in the West’s devotion to both individual freedom and the idea that in the free marketplace of ideas the most reasonable ones will ultimately defeat the least reasonable ones. But—as I would guess Harris knows and Hirsi Ali may be ignoring—the human heart and mind are much less simple than that. Hirsi Ali seems to believe that, since she and certain others on exposure to Western culture were able to cast off the worst shackles of Islamic fanatical thought, this avenue is open to all, and that it is the best avenue for combating the fanatical excesses of Islam.

But this hardly seems practical or likely, especially in the near future, and time may be of the essence. Hirsi Ali seems too reliant on the valiant example of herself and her fellow emigrants who are, after all, an almost infinitesimal fraction of the whole of Islam.

Hirsi Ali writes:

It is crucial that we not fall into the trap of assuming that the survival tactics of individuals living in tribal societies—like lying, hypocrisy, secrecy, violence, intimidation, and so forth—are in the interest of the modern individual or his culture.

But violence and intimidation certainly have always had a place in Enlightenment societies governed by reason. It is not possible to banish the darker aspects from the human heart and mind, nor the need to use violence on occasion to fight against those who would overturn the Enlightenment, be they anarchists or Nazis Romantics or Islamic totalitarians.

I believe what Harris may really be saying is that, in our emphasis on reason and tolerance, we must not forget to include a robust defense of our own culture and our own values. It is a balancing act; we don’t want to segue back into intolerance ourselves. But there is no other way to fight the forces of intolerance than to believe in and defend ourselves.

Comments

Fanaticism inherent in Islam itself: Hirsi Ali reviews Lee Harris — 35 Comments

  1. Hirsi Ali,??
    Its very sad see some people stick and being approved lire who was revoked from the host country that gave here save haven.

    In other reported she was advised by team of who interview her initially when she looking for refuges status to see sociology specialists to treat here.

    So the shortest way to make yourself attack Islam that what she doing and she try to make herself for all of her talk.

    All in all we know people who looks for refuges most of they build their cases by lies and if you go after them will tells you more stories and prove what said.

    Sadly people in all of this now taking the word from lire mouth and speared them over and over. This either of negligent of the facts what she did, or people like neoneo taking these here words for their propaganda and I can say hatred and racists attitude toward Arab/Muslims which have nothing to do with them as human they have their faith and their value.
    If you pause for a mint and think of the history for the last few centuries and see who fights and who killing people what they looking for and what’s they achieved, its or about gap the wealth more that really what claimed to change people because you are change and they did not.

    But the reality if take example Iraq as a nation for the past 1000 years was invaded and occupied 10 times! Yes Ten times, so if US when created by slaughtering 25millions of Indians and invaded for times (as if each 100 years for Iraq) so did US achieved and changed what we seeing now.

    BTW, some accusing Arab they can live with their neighbors like Sally and she like to keep them as it’s!! (Very ridiculous and stupid view) did come to your mind why the White Europeans who were changed went to the new world and they did not live in peace with native nation instead they slaughtered them and lived and stool their wealth.

    Sadly what we see its same history or human killing human with different lies but in different time and with different more deadly weapons.

  2. Truth seems to be a truther. Of course, his spelling (stool their wealth) calls into question both his intellect and his native language. If it is not English, it might indicate some bias.

    Looking past that, we should examine his facts. Were there in fact 25 million Native Americans? Given that they were a mixture of primitive agrarians and hunter-gatherers, that seems a rather large footprint on a “pristine” wilderness.

    Conflicts between primitive people and European settlers accustomed to intensive agriculture are not unique to the USA. Whatever we think about them, present affairs must be judged on their own merits. Whatever the justice or injustice of the USA taking the northern part of Mexico over a bond default dispute, history does not judge it to be justification for the Zimmerman telegram, or for the raids of Pancho Villa.

    This is not to say that we should not study history or examine historical trends. Those things explain. But present circumstances do or do not justify.

    Whenever you hear someone saying “She’s only saying that because …” your first question should be “Is the statement true?” If it is true, then it doesn’t matter what might motivate someone to say it. And that someone would try to discredit a statement based on motive alone says more about the person trying to discredit than it does about the person making the original statement.

    Neither Truth‘s bias nor his intellect should convince us of the truth or falsehood of his statements, of course. But they may tell us whether we should even bother taking him seriously.

  3. Since so much of the thesss of the book is dependent on hisory and one assumes historic documents, one must wonder why a serious Islamic scholar, such as Bernard Lewis, for example, was not selected as the reviewer. I do not doubt the intentions of Ms Ali, and she has paid a horrid cost for her bravery, and is a fine writer, but she is neither historian or scholar. No matter, the thesis seems valid. Islamic belief structure does lead to a vasly retrograde view of the world, society and the treatment of individuals that has not progressed beyond a very barren and primitive societal construct. It is only in those superficial Islamic nations, such as Turkey, where modernity and progressivism were layered on Islam and took root. It is not by chance that Turkey is a multicultural society with higher standards of education, translation of foreign literature, progressive scientific inquiry and a democratic structure, not seen anywhere else in the Islamic world. The state of science, literature and art, mired in the retrograde demands and ad hoc and confusing interpretations of what is or is not allowed, what thoughts or behaviors are tolerated, continue to trap most of the Islamic world in a bizarre primitivism. Perhaps Ms Ali finds these “romantic” but in a cultural milieu where the female rape victim is stoned for “tempting” a male or males, where fewer books are translated in the Islamic world of scores of nations and billions of people each year, that are translated in the tiny nation of the Netherlands, the past is the jailer and the future lies in the 9th century, not the 21st. Perhaps that is the saddest judgement of history.

  4. In 1989, the year that Ayatollah Khomeini issued his fatwa against Salman Rushdie, Ayaan Hirsi Ali was a devout student attending the Muslim Girls’ Secondary School in Nairobi. Her father, a Somali rebel leader, had the previous year led an insurgency into the Somali region of Ayl in a failed attempt to overthrow the dictatorship of Mohammed Siad Barre. The family continued to sit out their exile in Kenya.

    Hirsi Ali describes the process of her own immigration into the Netherlands when we next meet, this time in the Hague, where she is a member of parliament for the VVD liberal party, one of the three-party coalition currently in power. In 1992 – having deleted the story of her life in Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya; and having gained entry as a single Somali woman fleeing danger – she was sent to an asylum seekers’ centre in Leintern, in the municipality of Ede, which a decade later would become famous in the Netherlands as the place where the kids cheered the 9/11 attacks. At that time things were made comparatively easy for asylum seekers. She was designated as an A-status refugee, which allowed her to stay indefinitely (this designation is almost impossible to get now).

  5. Truth:

    I’m not even going to argue with your insane lies about American “genocide” against the Indians. I just have one simple question for you:

    You wanna be next?

  6. But the reality if take example Iraq as a nation for the past 1000 years was invaded and occupied 10 times!

    Hahahaha! You forget you are lecturing people who know history:

    The first invasion of “Iraq” (Persia) was the Muslim Invasion under Khalid ibn al-Walid in 650 something. How could you forget “Sayf Allah”, the Sword of Allah!?

    He offered the remnants of the Persian Empire the
    “The Dawat-ul-Islam” (Invitation to embrace Islam) after the Battle of Hira and those that didn’t got the sword–like Theodore Van Gogh got the sword 1350 years later.

    So Islam was spread by the sword and The American West was Won by the Winchester rifle.

    The difference is: we aren’t still shooting indians and the Umma is still beheading infidels:

    The Mujahideen would publicly torture and kill Hirsi Ali and broadcast it on Al Jazeera if they got a chance, and you know it!

    If you pause for a mint and think of the history for the last few centuries and see who fights and who killing people what they looking for and what’s they achieved, its or about gap the wealth

    When did The Sunnah become Communism?

    Since when were Marx and Lenin Salaf?

  7. Truth feels the same way about Hirsi Ali as I do about Felicity Arbuthnot.

    The difference is that I don’t want to see Felicity flogged and beheaded. Well, maybe just flogged (I kid! I kid!)

    I don’t disagree with “Truth” because he is Muslim, I disagree with him because he’s a leftist.

    I still like him better than the treacherous quisling American and European leftists: he’s legitimately, and honorably, on the other side!

  8. From the comments coming one look what to the point I made.

    You defending a lair approved lire she provoked from Dutch Parliament because she lied this not my make up words, but you defending a doggy lire.

    This is problem with her.

    Religions have mixed with culture and customs some those who get power inflecting the religions this is key point should be aware of.

  9. Religions have mixed with culture and customs some those who get power inflecting the religions this is key point should be aware of.

    Well, I agree with you there–as do the American Founding Fathers!

  10. There were 25 million Native Americans in North America but most died of disease before the arrival of the French, English and Dutch. While the Spanish DID wage a war of genocide against some. not all, South American tribes, this was not the case with the French and English and DEFINITELY not the case with the Americans, who often bent over backwards to find ways to accommodate the remaining tribes. The Euros like to accuse the Americans of “genocide” but it’s BS. They are really trying to absolve themselves of their own colonial histories.

  11. Yeah, it’s kinda funny to get lectured on the treatment of indians by an arab.

    Here in New Mexico, it was the Spanish who enslaved the indians. Don Juan de Onate is still revered by the Spanish and hated by the indians here:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_de_O%C3%B1ate

    Oé±ate soon gained a reputation as a stern ruler of both the Spanish colonists and the indigenous people. In October of 1598, a skirmish erupted when Oé±ate’s occupying Spanish military demanded supplies from the Acoma tribe – demanding things essential to the Acoma surviving the Winter. The Acoma resisted and thirteen Spaniards were killed, amongst them Don Juan Oé±ate’s nephew. In 1599, Oé±ate retaliated; his soldiers killed 800 villagers. They enslaved the remaining 500 women and children, and by Don Juan’s decree, the left foot of every Acoma man over the age of twenty-five was amputated. Eighty men had their left foot amputated.

    When the Albuquerque city council erected a statue to Onate in Albuquerque in 1998 for the “Fiesta de Cuatro Centenarios”, someone snuck in and cut his left foot off….

    Where, oh where, did the Spanish learn such cruelty? Here’s a clue:

    Influencing the Conquistadors:
    http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/827/tr3.htm

  12. Of course the arabs also brought learning, books and mathematics to an otherwise barbarian Spain:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Andalus

    By 750 Spain was way ahead of the rest of dark-ages Europe thanks to the Arab conquest, but Spain couldn’t conquer the New World until the Arabs were expelled by 1490….

    There are lots of Arabs, Iranians and Afghans in New Mexico. They tell me it reminds them of home….

    One of the most powerful families in New Mexico is Lebanese, the Maloof family:

    http://www.nba.com/kings/news/Joe_and_Gavin_Maloof_Bio.html

    I have an old friend named “Silva”–the original family name was “Shaheen”. He showed me his grandad’s ledgers from the old town store in my town. It was all in arabic. Now I call him “El Sheikh”, as a joke….

    That’s history: it’s all a mix of brilliance and cruelty, tragedy and farce….

    Every culture has been invader and invaded. Every national boundary is a result of war and conquest.

  13. @ Truth.

    “ You defending a lair approved lire she provoked from Dutch Parliament because she lied this not my make up words, but you defending a doggy lire. ”

    Since you are talking about TRUTH, and use it as your blog name, I will respond.

    LOL ( laugh out loud).

    Perhaps the reason is that from the Western point of view, the Arab/Muslim world is not seen as devoted to truth-telling as it might be. There is a very strong tendency to blame the West, to condemn the West for shortcomings in the Arab/Muslim world. The refusal to acknowledge responsibility for one’s own shortcomings is in effect lying to oneself and to others. The West is responsible neither for the high illiteracy rate in the Muslim world, nor for its endemic corruption, for example. Nor is the West responsible for the lack of intellectual curiosity shown by the low amount of books translated into Arabic compared to what a small country like Greece translates.

    Certainly the Arab/Muslim world is less likely to practice self-criticism than the Western world. Blame the West, blame the US. Just hand over the visa, you infidel dog. By the way, people in the West have great affection for dogs.

    Many Westerners consider Baghdad Bob, Saddam’s propaganda spokesman, who claimed defeat for the US troops as they were advancing towards the building, as rather typical of the Arabs. Think of Nasser’s rhetoric towards the Israelis, especially during the Six Day War. (Which he provoked by blockading the Gulf of Aqaba and ordering out the UN troops that were a buffer between Israel an Egypt.)

    Certainly lying is a universal trait. Look at Nixon. Certainly high-blown rhetoric of the type shown by Baghdad Bob and Nasser can be found all over the world, in Cairo and in Washington and in Singapore. However, the Arab world has higher tendency towards this rhetoric than the West. Plain-speaking is practiced and admired more in the West than it is in the Arab world.

    Let us also remember Taqiyya, and I quote from Wikipedia.

    “ The word ‘al-Taqiyya’ literally means: ‘Concealing or disguising one’s beliefs, convictions, ideas, feelings, opinions, and/or strategies at a time of imminent danger, whether now or later in time, to save oneself from physical and/or mental injury.’ A one-word translation would be ‘Dissimulation.’ ”

    If you wish to convince me of the correctness of your points of view, you need to deal with some of the above. I have been listening to high-blown Arab rhetoric for decades, and I have no more patience for it.

    I have had good relationships with people of Arab descent as a member of my parent’s household, schoolmate, employer and teacher in both the US and in Argentina. They exhibited none of the dysfunctional rage spewing out of the Arab/Muslim world today.

  14. “I have had good relationships with people of Arab descent as a member of my parent’s household, schoolmate, employer and teacher in both the US and in Argentina. They exhibited none of the dysfunctional rage spewing out of the Arab/Muslim world today.”

    Me too, however I would also note that *all* of them fled that type of thinking and think us westerners are the greatest things in the world. They are constantly amazed that we haven’t mostly leveled the place by now as that is generally considered to be a mild reaction to them.

    Every single one told me not to trust an Arab (well, themselves not included). I always found that…interesting. I’ve never been sure what to think on it because I hate to be that judgmental – after all that would mean I don’t trust them. I can’t imagine saying “never trust a “. I still do not really like that attitude as I have found reading Iraqi blogs to be fairly split.

    What I have eventually decided (and what they all approve) is outside of a very few areas or groups to not trust any Arab that doesn’t rant about the place unasked. If they don’t then they pretty much support the crap going on. I find this to be true in the blogs too – while I can’t say any are quite happy with what is going on in Iraq the only ones blaming it on the US are what we would generally refer to as Jihadist and aren’t really out there for a secular republic.

    Of course, I guess someone like Truth will point out that they fled their own country (and they are all still Muslim so they fled their comrades in religion). However I would note that they are classic examples of the issues we are finding with Arabs in specific and Muslims in general. It also shows that there are very much sane ones (one gave my father a small rug and after mentioning that we use it at the sink as it is the perfect size he laughingly told us that was a prayer rug – and it was genuine laughter and we quit using it at the sink).

    There was a WHOLE lot of things clicked into place when I found out he/she was an Arab. I had always pictured them as one of the “useful idiots” of the western world but some things didn’t really fit – that happens from time to time. I can MUCH more accurately guess what their response is going to be now.

  15. The unique trait of the Western culture is science. It had not arisen in any other civilization, even so sophisticated as Chinese and Hindu. This is defining atribute of West solely explaning it supremacy in all venues of life. The moral result is cult of honesty and itellectual integrity in pursue of truth.
    On the other hand, Arabic (Muslim) culture is unique in just opposing trait: institutionalization of lie (‘al-Taqiyya’) as accepted, even honored way of social behaviour, and complete suppression of intellectual curiosity. These two cultures are antipodes, and there is is not enough place on the Earth for both. One should be annihilated so other can prolong its existence.

  16. All other differencies between these cultures (fanaticism, unhuman cruelty, fantasy and paranoia as the main ways dealing with unplesant reality in Arabs, rampant corruption, poverty and inefficiency of government and economics) are just necessary consequencies of this primary divide in value of truth and ability to trust your neighbors, your seniors or your subordinates.

  17. “Truth” (aka “Pravda” in Russian): You defending a lair approved lire she provoked from Dutch Parliament because she lied this not my make up words, but you defending a doggy lire.

    As though this filth would be fit to clean Hirsi Ali’s shoes.

    Whoever this ridiculous “Truth” is, he writes ugly gibberish that only approaches meaning when, like this, he can repeat his misspelled insults over and over. To the extent that anyone’s defending Hirsi Ali here, it’s a defense of a brave human being who has stood up to the lying, butchering, murderous cowards in our midst who saw off people’s heads on video — all in the name and in the service of the religion of Islam. What’s “truth” done, other than to take advantage of the Western tradition of free speech, and the good will of even those he attacks, who have to struggle to understand the mangled syntax that he’s simply too lazy to fix himself? He’s been given a pass for too long. Gray says he’s at least better than the Quisling left, but that isn’t saying much, and given the kind of garbage I’ve quoted at the start I don’t think there’s anything “honorable” about being on the other side. When he show a tenth the courage of the woman he so bravely slurs, then we could talk about his legitimacy. Until then, he’s just despicable noise.

  18. Sergey: “On the other hand, Arabic (Muslim) culture is unique in just opposing trait: institutionalization of lie (‘al-Taqiyya’) as accepted, even honored way of social behaviour, and complete suppression of intellectual curiosity. These two cultures are antipodes…”

    i don’t disagree, but muslim culture is not unique in this, it is similarly pervasive in the culture of the left, and the harder left, the more accentuated and “fanatic”, ie. the mao personality cult, youth, and the cultural revolution in china, we know what it’s results were for the chinese people, and down the line…. my next suggestion may seem indirectly related to this topic, and deliberately inflamatory, but the propensity toward “rationalizing”, idealizing “tolerance”, the now “politically correct” whitewash of truth, the shallow acceptance of lie by omission, is now blatantly in front of us with the “first” real life twenty-first century version of the “manchurian candidate”, barak obama; from his muslim inculcation and name change, to his brand of christianity, to avoiding the american flag on his lapel, and the deliberate avoidance in addressing these things up front; and where does his major support come from, the left, the youth, etc…… i am not a racist by any stretch, but the only thing i do like about him is his “color”, we best beware of this trojan horse, we might not be as far behind “eurabia” as it seems…..

  19. (‘al-Taqiyya’)

    Just to clear some thing here for some who keeps repeating this world.

    (‘al-Taqiyya’) it’s not in Quranic teaching, its more adaptable concept from Sufi, Salafi and other branches of religions by people devoted themselves who deeply mixed religion with other cultures than Arab from Hindu and Persians.

    BTW guys you got your own “Taqiyya” like Benny Hinn, Chuck Missler

  20. To Perfected Dem: I agree that blatant negligence of truth in no way unique trait of Islam, it can be seen in many ideologies stemming from Marxism, and in many nihilistic teaching of Western origin (like German national romanticism, father of Nazism, or Nietshe philosophy), but all these are not original cultures, but counter-cultures, that is, heresies, openly anti-Western, anti-scientific, and challenging Western Judeo-Christian value system and Hellenistic tradition of rationality. They are apostates from true Western heritage. But Islam is another story: it is monolithic alien culture, antithetical to everything that constitute modernity and progress and virtues of the West.

  21. We get more TRUTH.

    “ (‘al-Taqiyya’) it’s not in Quranic teaching, its more adaptable concept from Sufi, Salafi and other branches of religions by people devoted themselves who deeply mixed religion with other cultures than Arab from Hindu and Persians. ”

    So al-Taqiyya was a corruption, or a watering down, of true Islam by non-Arabs. If al-Taqiyya is a corruption or watering down of Islam by Persians and Hindus, this corruption or watering down of Islam has spread far and wide to the Arabs. Example: Yasser Arafat, who to his Arab cohorts talked about a Palestinian state from the river to the sea, but to the West talked about coexistence with Israel and a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.

    Here is an interesting news item. While Berbers in North Africa have been Muslim for well over a thousand years, and were the dominant group in the Maghreb (Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia) when Islam arrived with the Arabs over 1300 years ago, the first translation of the Koran into their language didn’t occur until 2007.

  22. It might be interesting to not focus on the personalities, Ms Ali, for example, who how ever you cut it is one heck of a brave and determined lady. Rather, the original thesis of the book, and the liklihood of a rational future for a 21st Century Islamic presence, rather than an 8th ot 9th Century yearning. The core difficulty is that 21st Century technology in the hands of death cults do not bode well for anyone.

    On another note, the introduction of “Native American ” issues is diversionary and mostly silly. The only “Native Americans” after all are the animals and plants that greeted all those folks 15,000 years ago or so (with a hefty +/- number) when the firs humans entered this hemisphere. Similarly to attach population numbers to a population at European contact stretches the data as does to ascribe a Rousseau kind of noble savage notion. Populations that met the first modern Europeans, Viking or from Spain, were complex, political, warlike and peaceful, slave owning and free, corrupt or honorable, vegetarian and cannabilistic, rural societies or militaristic–in short, they were as “good” or “bad” as the rest of the world. To deny them their complexity is not only false, but paternalistic and demeaning. There does seem to be some evidence of major waves of disease impacting populations decades before European contact. Folks forget that bubonic and pneumonic plague, for example, were present in the New World, as were other diseases.

  23. Thank you Sally, for cutting to the heart of the matter. ‘Truth’ (where are you George Orwell? ) isn’t fit to utter the name of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the most courageous woman of our age, and worthy successor to Oriana Fallaci.

  24. I think Truth is just a computer program vomitting the liberal algorithms. The only rational response to Truth and his notions is to ban them from the blog. These are not thoughts we have not thought about, nor are they thoughts we could not think but for their illustrious intellectual generosity. They are the same caliber as “the White Race uber alles!” and “kill the kulaks!” and “Abba is a great band!” Don’t let them exploit your better natures, folks, just fucking ban them.

  25. Neo-neocon, your link Hirsi Ali’s review in the the New York Times is broken. Glancing at the HTML for this posting, it appears that the problem is a syntax error in your link: You have “href” followed the link in quotes, whereas you should have “href=” followed by the link.

    Your next link, to your hirsi-ali-intolerant-of-intolerance blog post, is broken in the same way.

  26. Neo, I think we should not just side step her points about romanticism.

    I’m not so sure extreme thoughts on tolerance, and such, are really outgrowths of Enlightenment thought… pushed too far. I mostly agree with her, it’s a sort of rationalization of tribalism or whatever you call it (anti westernism?) via romanticism…

  28. Two things to add in this subject who went very far and sadly most of the comment lake of real discussion of the main topic and main point I raised about Ali’s case.

    To those who through on me their words of laying, I am here raising the Ali’s distrusts behaviour and lies, so in one side you are defend a liar, and in other side you claiming with “insulting” and “disgusted” of my “lies” can you tell me here the difference why Ali’s lies ok for you?

    Never mind Ali’s thoughts and views about Islam its her right to say and what she thinks about Islam, neither Christianity nor Judaism can be damaged and broken by words of some individuals who seek fame in this world this is not first time and not will be the last and history have many examples to tell.

    But what interesting here this view which may I failed to convey to you about the problem with Muslims and Islam:

    Many first-generation Muslims who arrived in the West at the close of Empire were too burdened financially to successfully integrate, Ramadan argues in Western Muslims and the Future of Islam, and the situation is now radically different. New immigrants had known religion mainly as a cultural practice and transmitted it to their children without a firm knowledge of its edicts, managing nonetheless to instill in them “an intuitive understanding of and respect of faith”. With younger Muslims turning to the sources, Quran and Sunna, new sides of Islam are emphasised, perhaps endangering the cultural relativism of Islam in its Arab, African and Asian forms? “I don’t have a problem with cultural dress,” Ramadan responds, “unless cultural practice stops you from being open to how Islam is practised in different countries, producing the idea that only Islam as it is practised in, say, Bangladesh or Saudi Arabia, is correct. There is of course a serious issue at stake here: when cultural dress is mistakenly understood as a principle of Islam, as, for instance, in the case of female genital mutilation.”

    Middle East studies in the News

    And for those who seek to know more about Islam and science this may be good article giving brief window to it.

    Rediscovering Arabic Science
    Written by Richard Covington

    Finally to those who used insulting words like reply with ” this filth would be fit to clean Hirsi Ali’s shoes” and ” You wanna be next?” or ” just f* ban them”, these are very downy comments made which reflect how some very short minded and short-sighted people illusionary guys who don’t like to hear people their tones different from theirs, really not worth replay to them.
    But reminder grows up guys and remembers that your country (presumably you are all US citizens) went to ME to help people and free them for better change and better life for them and their future generations not KILLING them.

  29. your country (presumably you are all US citizens) went to ME to help people and free them for better change and better life for them and their future generations not KILLING them.

    No — we went to ME to stop people from there killing US. Which means killing some of THEM.

    Also, the phrase used to describe you was “as though this filth would be fit to clean Hirsi Ali’s shoes” — meaning that you’re NOT. The difference between your lies and hers, by the way, is that hers were needed to save her life from the vicious culture you spend all your time apologizing for; yours are used to smear the victims of that same miserable and deranged bunch of killers and thugs.

    How’s that for “downy comments”?

  30. the White Europeans who were changed went to the new world and they did not live in peace with native nation instead they slaughtered them and lived and stool their wealth.

    The Spanish did in fact engage in an outright conquest (although the Spanish crown attempted to moderate the conquest), however the English settlers attempted to live with the Indians.

    Inboth New England and Virginia, the initial English settlers bought their land from the indians. The first major indian war was in Virginia in 1622, when the indians attempted to exterminate the English in a viscious surprise attack.

    The reality is that the relationship between English(later US) and indian was dominated by an effort by the English (US) to get along with the indians. It was simply not possible for cultures with such divergent values with respect to property rights, etc., to coexist.

    An example: at the end of Red Cloud’s War, Red Cloud was presented a fancy Winchester 1873 rifle, the most advanced repeating rifle at the time. In the subsequent Little Bighorn campaign, Red Cloud gave the rifle to, IIRC, his cousin. Red Cloud had signed a treaty, and couldn’t fight the white man, but the treaty was only binding to Red Cloud himself, in the indian view of the world.

    Incidently, the 1873 Winchester presented to red Cloud may have been the most advanced rifle used in the battle. The indians had at least 200 of the earlier rimfire Winchester 1866 models and Henry rifles. The soldiers were using single shot Trapdoor Springfields. Custer himself used a single shot Remington rolling block.

  33. The news of the “termination” by the JCS of the Stephen Coughlin, the only Islamic law expert at the JCS or, for that matter, in DOD, at the behest of a Pentagon Muslim civilian advisor named Hashem Islam, because Couglin refused Islam’s demand that Coughlin ” soften” his views about the connection between Islamic doctrines and Jihad, has hit the blogosphere, and the TV raising all sorts of interesting questions.

    Couglin has produced an extremely enlightening and fascinating look at this subject in his thesis, “To Our Great Detriment” found here at http://www.strategycenter.net/research/pubID.176/pub_detail.asp,

  34. P.S. This revelatory text which is very well written, cuts directly to the bone and illuminates key issues we will need to understand if we are to win the war Islam has thrust upon us. It is well worth the effort to download and rea it.

  35. Pingback:Steynianism 22.0 « Free Mark Steyn!

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