Well, the tone of your answer (last paragraph) continues in the same vein, as expected. You are now officially a troll.

The argument from authority is exactly what you are positing. I already answered the question you posed, and I pointed out that 99% of the pundits and journalists around the world who write on the subject glean their information from the same sources I do. The 1% of experts, who also write on the subject, constitute some of our sources. But strangely enough, those experts don’t have the answers either, and are often wrong.

It doesn’t take any particular authority to see that I haven’t engaged in any argument from authority. I posed a question. A question is not an argument.

To repeat something I’ve said prior to your cameo experience: to generalize about X, you need experience of X. The less experience you have of X, the harder it is to generalize about it (no matter who are you). You’ve offered a series of very large generalizations in this post about the Islamic world. It’s a perfectly reasonable question to ask: how much of that world have you experienced, and from what vantage point? A person who speaks no Arabic, no Farsi, no Turkish, no Urdu, etc., would not even be able to negotiate his or her way from an airport terminal to a taxi in Egypt, Iran, Turkey, or Pakistan–or from the taxi to the nearest hotel or tourist attraction. It’s unclear why such a person could be relied on to know anything about the “moderateness” of the religion of the taxi driver or the other million or so people in the immediate vicinity. And yet for some reason, your readers take you very, very seriously on this subject, and you yourself expect to be taken that way.

Imagine someone sitting in front of a computer somewhere in Pakistan–somehow who speaks no English and has never been to the US–pontificating about the religious fervor of the Christians and Jews of North America. It’s nearly a certainty that such a person’s opinions would be a preposterous, uninformed farrago of half-truths and stereotypes. Why is it any better–or any different–if someone else does the analogous thing in the reverse direction? And how is it an appeal to authority to pose this utterly obvious question?

I use the tone I do because your readers have thoroughly earned it. If you can’t grasp that, you haven’t been paying attention to your own blog, and I really don’t owe you any further explanation.

I’m assuming English is not your first language. But unfortunately, your question (in your 8:00 PM comment) is phrased in such a way that I can’t understand it.

Hope your Filter not blocking me after this comment as spammer!

Wahhabist imams that run the Ka’aba are so obsessed with keeping kafir away that they made French commandos ‘instant’ Muslims so that they could drive fanatics out of the Ka’aba!

“A team of three French commandos from the Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale (GIGN) arrived in Mecca. Because of the prohibition against non-Muslims entering the holy city, they converted to Islam in a brief, formal ceremony. The commandos pumped gas into the underground chambers, but perhaps because the rooms were so bafflingly interconnected, the gas failed and the resistance continued. With casualties climbing, Saudi forces drilled holes into the courtyard and dropped grenades into the rooms below, indiscriminately killing many hostages but driving the remaining rebels into more open areas where they could be picked off by sharpshooters. More than two weeks after the assault began, the surviving rebels finally surrendered.[24] [25][26]”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Mosque_Seizure

So, it’s a BIG thing, nothing small at all.

&&&

Obviously, I would not bet all on the one card. I would have experts staff-it-out and find every hot button item that MUST call Allah to Earth to defend the faithful.

Then I’d throw it to the Pentagon brass to resolve what’s viable.

There are more than enough American Jews to meet the need. A couple of Mogan Davids fluttering in the breeze would make quite a statement.

It may be deemed necessary to occupy other critical religious sites.

The point is to destroy Islam and to save the Muslims. Mass realization, mass conversion, is the ONLY GAME IN TOWN.

It’s also the only one that gets no serious hearing.

As 1400 years of woe have shown, retail reversals, even national expulsions, don’t work. The Muslims merely double down and double dare you.

That’s the power of the Islamic meme-set:

http://www.citizenwarrior.com/2007/10/terrifying-brilliance-of-islamic.html

While our man gets off to a stumbling start — as he assumes that readers don’t know what a meme is — he has a terrific post that’s worth spreading around.

One take-away: Islam is absolutely brutal against Muslims. It’s no wonder they’re destined to poverty.

I noticed the little kerfluffle here and though I’d make a cameo appearance.

I believe people are responding negatively to your air of condescending arrogance more than anything else.

As for your question about my travels, languages, etc—of course (as I’m sure you already know) I don’t know Arabic or Farsi, nor have I traveled extensively in Muslim countries, nor do I have a degree in Mideast studies (took a course, but it was way too long ago to be relevant). In these respects I resemble about 99.99% of the journalists and pundits who write on these subjects. Nor do I hold myself out to be any sort of expert about these subjects. I am a generalist and thinker, and I read, think, and then write my opinions, which you or anyone else can take or leave as you see fit.

I observe, however, that supposed experts in the area who know the languages and have lived in those regions don’t necessarily get it any more right than I do when doing their analyses of the region and making predictions. Funny thing, that. Which doesn’t mean that their opinions aren’t to be valued or considered. But their opinions still must be reacted to with logic and common sense, and rejected if they don’t meet those tests. Same with my opinions—they either meet those tests, or they don’t, and should be countered with other facts and with logic, if someone disagrees with what I write. The argument from authority (argumentum ab auctoritate) doesn’t bear much weight. An argument must be a good argument on its own.

Right, now that I’ve cleaned your clocks, you have to pretend I’m not here. It’s called “evasion.”

I guess I’m not clear on just how you propose it be done. I proposed a ‘tighten the screws’ method, while you are proposing a signal event that we precipitate.

Can you explain how you would have Jews walk around the Ka’aba?

The number one institution for oil and gas drilling is in Oklahoma.

It has a vast, vast, vast, following in the Muslim Middle East. It’s their ‘Harvard’ if you didn’t know.

It’s so massive that the FBI has an over-sized bureau to deal with it — pretty much just the university. This reality is never publicized.