Free speech, honest speech - or sugar?

ISLAM-HATERS: AN ENEMY WITHIN, by Ralph Peters
September 7, 2006 -- ISLAMIST fanatics attacked us and yearn to destroy us. The Muslim civilization of the Middle East has failed comprehensively and will continue to generate violence. The only way to deal with faith-poisoned terrorists is to kill them.
     And the world's only hope for long-term peace is for moderate Muslims - by far the majority around the globe - to recapture their own faith.
     But a rotten core of American extremists is out to make it harder for them.
     The most repugnant trend in the American shouting match that passes for a debate on the struggle with Islamist terrorism isn't the irresponsible nonsense on the left - destructive though that is. The really ugly "domestic insurgency" is among right-wing extremists bent on discrediting honorable conservatism.
     How? By insisting that Islam can never reform, that the violent conquest and subjugation of unbelievers is the faith's primary agenda - and, when you read between the lines, that all Muslims are evil and subhuman.
     I've received no end of e-mails and letters seeking to "enlighten" me about the insidious nature of Islam. Convinced that I'm naive because I defend American Muslims and refuse to "see" that Islam is 100 percent evil, the writers warn that I'm a foolish "dhimmi," blind to the conspiratorial nature of Islam.
     ...I'm no Pollyanna. I'm all for killing terrorists, rather than taking them prisoner. I know we're in a fight for our civilization. But the fight is with the fanatics - a minority of a minority - not with those who simply worship differently than those of us who grew up with the Little Brown Church in the Vale.
     Does Islam foster practices that inhibit progress or integration into the modern (and postmodern) world? Yes, as practiced in the greater Middle East, from the Nile to the Indus. Our "allies," the Saudi ruling family, are the embodiment of evil - but they've done far more damage to the Muslim world than to us.
     Elsewhere, Muslims are struggling to move their faith forward in constructive ways. And all religions are what living men and women make of them.
     In our own country, we should respect our fellow citizens who happen to be Muslims - instead of implying that they're all members of a devious fifth column. More than 3 million Americans profess Islam. How many have strapped on bombs and walked into Wal-Mart?
     The problem isn't the man or woman of faith, but cultural environment. Once free of the maladies of the Middle East, Muslims thrive in America. Like the rest of us.
     We are in a knife-fight to the death with fanatics who've perverted a great religion. But those who warn of Muslims in general are heirs of the creeps who once told us Jews can never be real Americans and JFK will serve the Vatican.
     Obviously, there's a moral reason for not condemning all Muslims. Real Americans judge men and women by their individual characters and actions, not by the color of their skin or the liturgy they recite on their respective Sabbaths. Sorry, all you bigots: You'll never get the Wannsee Conference, Part II, at Lake Tahoe.
     But even for our inveterate haters, those whose personal disappointments have left them with a need to blame others (sounds like al Qaeda to me . . . ), there's a Realpolitik reason not to insult all Muslims: In the serious world of strategy and the military, you don't make unnecessary enemies.
     We've got our hands full in the Middle East. Why alienate the Muslims of Indonesia or West Africa (or California)? A wise strategist seeks to divide his enemies, not to recruit for them. Some of the bigots out there might like to try to kill a billion Muslims, but I'm not signing up for their genocidal daydreams - nor will my fellow Americans.
     Ultimately, our military actions can only buy time. The long overdue liberal reformation within the Islamic world can only be carried out by Muslims themselves. Those who believe in Islam with all their hearts will have to be the ones who defeat those who hijacked their faith.
     Do we have to fight? Yes. But let's fight our true enemies, not the innocent.

My Thoughts...

Hate speech? You want real hate speech?

“The Americans’ secret method is that they do not hate very well. They’re terrible at it. They don’t teach their children to hate, they constantly forget who their enemies are, and they forgive adversaries, usually before the last bullet has landed. Islamists, and so many people in the Middle East, cling to hate as an addiction, passing it on to their children, cherishing it inside themselves, using it as the centerpiece of their lives. Hate, quite simply, like other addictions, is a waste of time and energy. ”

Words of wisdom...

     Our current crisis is not yet a catastrophe, but a real loss of confidence of the spirit. The hard-won effort of the Western Enlightenment of some 2,500 years that, along with Judeo-Christian benevolence, is the foundation of our material progress, common decency, and scientific excellence, is at risk in this new millennium.
     But our newest foes of Reason are not the enraged Athenian democrats who tried and executed Socrates. And they are not the Christian zealots of the medieval church who persecuted philosophers of heliocentricity. Nor are they Nazis who burned books and turned Western science against its own to murder millions en masse.
     No, the culprits are now more often us. In the most affluent, and leisured age in the history of Western civilization--never more powerful in its military reach, never more prosperous in our material bounty--we have become complacent, and then scared of the most recent face of barbarism from the primordial extremists of the Middle East.
     What would a beleaguered Socrates, a Galileo, a Descartes, or Locke believe, for example, of the moral paralysis in Europe? Was all their bold and courageous thinking--won at such a great personal cost--to allow their successors a cheap surrender to religious fanaticism and the megaphones of state-sponsored fascism?
     Just imagine in our present year, 2006: plan an opera in today's Germany, and then shut it down. Again, this surrender was not done last month by the Nazis, the Communists, or kings, but by the producers themselves in simple fear of Islamic fanatics who objected to purported bad taste. Or write a novel deemed unflattering to the Prophet Mohammed. That is what did Salman Rushdie did, and for his daring, he faced years of solitude, ostracism, and death threats--and in the heart of Europe no less. Or compose a documentary film, as did the often obnoxious Theo Van Gogh, and you may well have your throat cut in "liberal" Holland. Or better yet, sketch a simple cartoon in postmodern Denmark of legendary easy tolerance, and then go into hiding to save yourself from the gruesome fate of a Van Gogh. Or quote an ancient treatise, as did Pope Benedict, and then learn that all of Christendom may come under assault, and even the magnificent stones of the Vatican may offer no refuge--although their costumed Swiss Guard would prove a better bulwark than the European police. Or write a book critical of Islam, and then go into hiding in fear of your life, as did French philosophy teacher Robert Redeker.
     And we need not only speak of threats to free speech, but also the tangible rewards from a terrified West to the agents of such repression.
     Van Gogh, it was said, was obnoxious, his films sometimes puerile. The academic Pope was perhaps woefully ignorant of public relations in the politically correct age. Were not the cartoons in Denmark amateurish and unnecessary? Rushdie was an overrated novelist, whose chickens of trashing the West he sought refuge in finally came home to roost. The latest Hans Neuenfels's adaptation of Mozart's "Idomeneo" was apparently as silly as it was cheaply sensationalist. And perhaps Robert Redeker need not have questioned the morality of Islam and its Prophet.
     But isn't that fact precisely the point? It is easy to defend artists when they produce works of genius that do not challenge popular sensibilities--Da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" or Montesquieu's "Spirit of the Laws"--but not so when an artist offends with neither the taste of a Michelangelo nor the talent of a Dante. Yes, Pope Benedict is old and scholastic; he lacks both the charisma and tact of the late Pope John Paul II, who surely would not have turned for elucidation to the rigidity of Byzantine scholarship. But isn't that why we must come to the present Pope's defense--if for no reason other than because he has the courage to speak his convictions when others might not?
     Note also the constant subtext in this new self-censorship of our supposedly liberal age: the fear of radical Islam and its gruesome methods of beheadings, suicide bombings, improvised explosive devices, barbaric fatwas, riotous youth, petrodollar-acquired nuclear weapons, oil boycotts and price hikes, and fist-shaking mobs, as the seventh century is compressed into the twenty-first.
     In contrast, almost daily in Europe, "brave" artists caricature Christians and Americans with impunity. And we know what explains the radical difference in attitudes to such freewheeling and "candid" expression--indeed, that hypocrisy of false bravado, of silence before fascists and slander before liberals is both the truth we are silent about, and the lie we promulgate.
     There is, in fact, a long list of reasons, among them most surely the assurance that cruel critics of things Western rant without being killed. Such cowards puff out their chests when trashing an ill Oriana Fallaci or a comatose Ariel Sharon or beleaguered George W. Bush in the most demonic of tones, but they prove sunken and sullen when threatened by a thuggish Dr. Zawahiri or a grand mufti of some obscure mosque.
     Second, almost every genre of artistic and intellectual expression has come under assault: music, satire, the novel, films, academic exegesis, and education. Somehow Europeans have ever so insidiously given up the promise of the Enlightenment that welcomed free thought of all kinds, the more provocative the better.
     Yes, the present generation of Europeans really is heretical, made up of traitors of a sort. They themselves, not just their consensual governments, or the now-demonized American Patriot Act and Guantanamo detention center, or some invader across the Mediterranean, have endangered their centuries-won freedoms of expression--and out of worries over oil, or appearing as illiberal apostates of the new secular religion of multiculturalism, or another London or Madrid bombing. We can understand why outnumbered Venetians surrendered Cyprus to the Ottomans, and were summarily executed, or perhaps why the 16th-century French did not show up at Lepanto, but why this vacillation of present-day Europeans to defend the promise of the West, who are protected by statute and have not experienced war or hunger?
     Third, examine why all these incidents took place in Europe, where more and more the state guarantees the good life even into dotage, where the here and now has become a finite world for soulless bodies, where armies devolve into topics of caricature, and children distract from sterile adults' ever-increasing appetites. So, it was logical that Europe most readily of Westerners would abandon the artist and give up the renegade in fear of religious extremists who brilliantly threatened not destruction, but interruption of the good life, or the mere charge of illiberality. Never was the Enlightenment sold out so cheaply.
     Just as the Europeans are stunned that their heaven on earth has left them weak and afraid, so too millions of Americans on the Left are angry that their own promised moral utopia is not so welcomed by the supposedly less educated and bright among them. But still, what drives Westerners, here and in Europe, to demand that we must be perfect rather than merely good, and to lament that if we are not perfect we are then abjectly bad--and always to be so unable to define and then defend their civilization against its most elemental enemies?
     So we are on dangerous ground. History gives evidence of no civilization that survived long as purely secular and without a god, that put its trust in reason alone, and believed human nature was subject to radical improvement given enough capital and learning invested in the endeavor. The failure of our elites to amplify their traditions they received, and to believe them to be not merely different but far better than the alternatives, is also a symptom of crisis in all societies of the past, whether Demosthenes' Athens, late imperial Rome, 18th-century France, or Western Europe of the 1920s. Nothing is worse that an elite that demands egalitarianism for others but ensures privilege for itself. And rarely, we know, are civilization's suicides a result of the influence of too many of the poor rather than of the wealthy.
     But can I end on an optimistic note in tonight's tribute to Winston Churchill, who endured more and was more alone than we of the present age? After the horror of September 11, we in our sleep were also given a jolt of sorts, presented with enemies from the Dark Ages, the Islamic fascists who were our near exact opposites, who hated the Western tradition, and, more importantly, were honest and without apology in conveying that hatred of our liberal tolerance and forbearance. They arose not from anything we did or any Western animosity that might have led to real grievances, but from self-acknowledged weakness, self-induced failure, and, of course, those perennial engines of war, age-old envy and lost honor--always amplified and instructed by dissident Western intellectuals whose unhappiness with their own culture proved a feast for the scavenging Al-Qaedists.
     By past definitions of relative power, al-Qaeda and its epigones were weak and could not defeat the West militarily. But their genius was knowing of our own self-loathing, of our inability to determine their evil from our good, of our mistaken belief that Islamists were confused about, rather than intent to destroy, the West, and most of all, of our own terror that we might lose, if even for a brief moment, the enjoyment of our good life to defeat the terrorists. In learning what the Islamists are, many of us, and for the first time, are also learning what we are not. And in fighting these fascists, we are to learn whether our freedom can prove stronger than their suicide belts and improvised explosive devices.

From a forum, words about not 'insulting' Muslims

     We as Muslims want to respect to the Australian law, but at the same time we won't ignore our Sharia Law, we can't close the Quran and it's rules just because of respect to the majority. So I think Muslims and the Australian government should find a solution for this.
     I appreciate for your answer or solution, but please do not suggest Muslims to leave Australia. That is not a democratic solution for Australia, some of them have been born here in Australia, where do you want them to go?
     Please do not insult the religion if you comment here. Thanks.

     Please do not tell me what I can and cannot say. We call this freedom of speech. It is part of Western culture and heritage. I will respect you when you respect me. OK?.
     Your comment about not “insulting” is typical of the problems in Islamic societies. No insulting means no critical thought, no freedom of conscience, no political freedom, no economic liberty and no human rights. It is a chain and all links must be respected.
     Be aware that I do not insult religions. I only tell the truth. Truth is not an insult. If I say the Quran is full of hate and violence, that is not an insult. It is a fact. If I say that Mohammad attacked, murdered, plundered, tortured, enslaved, raped and beat his wife, that is not an insult. If you don’t like these facts, please take the matter up with Muslim, Abu Dawud, Bukhari, Hisham, Kathir, Tabari, etc… Do you recognize those names?

     The question is the meaning of insult. I am not talking about gratuitous insensitivity with the purpose of offending.
     For Muslims, anything that criticizes Islam is insulting. Anything they don’t like is an insult.

     No, no, no. You don't have to kill torture or rape to be a real Muslim. Most Muslims are not extremists. There are plenty of good Muslims that would never do anything like that. I have never said otherwise. Most Muslim are people like us... but
     The problem is that the good Muslims, the ones that are good people, are also the ones that love and respect Mohammad and the Quran. Am I wrong? Have you ever asked a Muslim about their dear prophet? Have you ever asked them to explain his actions in the traditions?
     My point is that you cannot count upon the 'good' Muslims to stand up for your rights, particularly when Muslims are in control.
     Or let me put it this way, if there are so many good Muslims, why is there so much hate, oppression and persecution in Islamic societies? Where are all the good Muslims when you need them? Why don't the good Muslims in Egypt stand up against the treatment of the copts or the mass sexual attacks in Cairo? Why don't the good Muslims in Arabia take a stand against the vile laws in that country. Why don't good Muslims in Pakistan, Algeria, Tunisia, Lybia, Iran take a stand against the apostasy laws and other discriminatory policies? Why don't the good Muslims in Iran stop the religious police from beating women in the streets when a few hairs were showing? Why didn't the good Muslims in Afhganistan stop the Tabliban from shooting women in football stadiums?
     After much thought I decided that there may be many Muslims that do good things and say cute words (as most in the West do), but they cannot be trusted unless they are honest about matters of life, liberty and human rights. Unfortunately, few Muslim put these values above those of their religion, and that is why things never change. Moderate Muslims make excuses and say pretty words, radical Muslims preach hate and kill. Then both groups go back to the mosque to pray together.

     Muslims want to 'start a conversation'?
     Well, they can start by explaining two things:
1. the hate and violence against non-Muslims in the Quran and the accounts relating to the many vile things their did prophet did, as recorded in the traditions (and why the say "praise be unto him" after the name of this man, and copnsider him a great moral example, in view of his actions recorded by his friends and followers).
2. The situation of Muslim societies, or better, the status of non-Muslims and other oppressed groups in those countries where Islam dominates.
     Before any dialogue is possible, these issues need to be explained and resolved. After all, why should anyone believe anything a Muslim says about "human rights", "secularism" or "separation of church and state" "tolerance" and other important, fundamental issues when the facts are that Muslims say and do one thing where they dominate (hate, violence, oppression) and do differently in places where they are a minority (sweet talk, respect us, Islam is peace, bla bla bla).
     Muslims only want to talk about how the West can accomodate them. It is a one-way street. The give nothing, only make demands.
     Muslims have no credibility on these issues. When Muslims renounce the hate and violence in the Quran and denounce the vile acts of their prophet and start treating non-Muslims like they want to be treated, then and only then can have a serious conversation.

     If that's the kind of response that is directed towards articulate, reasonable Muslims in a reasonably civilised forum, then it's not all that hard to imagine where disaffected young Muslims on suburban streets derive their resentment.
     You Islamophobes are very much part of any social problems we may experience in Australia with our Muslim minority. How is any kind of mutual respect possible when such rabid intolerance is present?

     Mutual respect, you say? The key word is MUTUAL! The problem is that your your Muslims friends do not respect others. They only want respect and dialogue on their terms.
     Tell me, what is reasonable and civilized about people that refuse to be honest about their own religion? Is it unreasonable to ask about the hate and violence Islam teaches in its writings? Is is unreasonable to assume that the intolerance, oppression and lack of freedoms in Islamic societies might be a result of the Islam and its teachings?
     About Islamophobia. There are two problems with the word (not counting the incorrect association with the word fear from the Greek phobia).
1. This term confuses hostility toward Islam as a religion or ideology with hostility toward Muslims as individuals. The former is a valid point of view; dislike of Islam because of its teachings and how it is practiced is a completely understandable and intellectually valid position based upon its doctrines and current events
2. The use of this word provides an excuse for Muslims to blame others for their problems and to avoid critical thinking. To consider the actions of Muslims, or even more so, the doctrines of Islam, as a source of Islamophobia would require that Muslims consider each of these and evaluate these in terms of moral values and basic human rights.
     I am always ready for 'meaningful conversation' with Muslims, but these have been few and far between -- but not because I haven't tried.