Thoughts on the problem from Instapundit.
By the way, I’d say that Al-Sisi has already done more to deserve a Peace Prize than Barack Obama had when he got his. Or has done since.
16 thoughts on “Islam’s Tarnished Brand”
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Thoughts on the problem from Instapundit.
By the way, I’d say that Al-Sisi has already done more to deserve a Peace Prize than Barack Obama had when he got his. Or has done since.
Comments are closed.
In a similar vein, it was encouraging to see Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas attend the Paris rally.
Rand, I totally agree about Al-Sisi deserving a peach prize. He surely does, and certainly far more than Obama (my umbrella stand deserves it more than Obama).
However, let’s please not forget a huge aspect when discussing Al Sisi’s courageous and truthful stand; he’s the guy the Obama admin wanted, and I guess still wants, to step down, because they want the Muslim Brotherhood back in power. (they object to military coups, but are just fine and dandy with islamists).
Being disliked by President Obama is a feature, not a bug.
That is an excellent point, Michael.
The most charitable possible explanation is that Obama has an unerring knack of picking the wrong side of almost every issue. What that means is that some of Obama’s critics are wrong, for he’s not useless; he serves as a highly accurate negative indicator.
The more you read about Al-Sisi’s human rights record, the more you will see that he might only be the lesser of two evils.
Here’s a place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_2013_Rabaa_massacre
Nevermind Obama (love him, hate him, whatever), just think about how much you want to praise Al-Sisi. I think you might want to welcome his call for a reform in Islam, and you might want to see him as preferable to the Islamists, but I wonder how much you’d otherwise want to praise him. Question Obama’s Nobel prize, sure, but I hardly think Al-Sisi qualifies for one.
The lesser of two evils is, unfortunately, often our only choice in that part of the world. I didn’t say that he deserved a Peace Prize, just that he did so more than Obama did. Or, for that matter, than Yassir Arafat did. It’s a pretty low bar.
You know who else was the lesser of two evils? Mubarak.
Obama helped overthrow a government that was friendly with the US and its neighbors and then helped replace it with the totalitarian Muslim militant group the Muslim Brotherhood. The administration lied about it, of course, by claiming the MB was secular. Then unable to recognize how retarded that was, fought to keep the MB in power.
The new guy may not be any better than Mubarak but at least he wont be taking Egypt down the road of Iran or Afghanistan.
@ Bob-1.
Speaking in general,I think it’s better to support the lessor evil than the greater one. And I might point out that, in your own words, Obama is backing the greater evil (due to opposing what you call the lessor one).
However, the link you sent seems to refer to a massacre of muslim brotherhood supporters? If so, I’ll praise Al-Sisi him for that, too – because the best thing to do with an islamist is to kill them.
I’m sure there’s plenty I’d find objectionable about Al-Sisi, but so what? The issue at hand is his speech, and on that, I’m in full accord and find it praiseworthy. As far as his human rights record, I’ll bet there are things he’s done that I’d disapprove of, but massacring muslim brotherhood supporters sure as heck isn’t one of them – the more islamists he kills, the better I like him.
Well, see, I wouldn’t like someone who killed unarmed Nazis/Islamists/Communists/etc because they were exercising their right to speech and exercising their right to peacefully demonstrate, but apparently that’s where we differ.
@ Bob-1;
You wouldn’t like someone who killed unarmed Nazis? Then we differ in opinions on that matter, quite markedly.
Nazis, like their islamist fellow-travelers, were enthusiastic supporters of a rabidly expansionist, genocidal, totalitarian creed. The world would have been a far better place had they been wiped out at the Nuremberg rallies or before, instead of going on to cause the greatest war, and worst genocide, that the world has ever seen. They were, like islamists, a disease.
Like Rand, I think one should fight words with more words.
@ Bob-1
Fighting words with more words is fine, if words alone are at issue. However, with islamists, like the Nazis, their intent and actions went far beyond words – and fighting such with words alone is a sure route to defeat. Focusing on a particular narrow moment and calling it free speech, be it the Nuremberg rallies or the pro-Morsi demonstrations, ignores the truth of the whole. In Germany, they went on to commit horrors such as the world has never seen – and aside from the islamists, would prefer to not see again.
Eh, it’s just words…
http://humanevents.com/2013/07/26/muslim-brotherhood-kills-its-supporters-to-implicate-egyptian-military/
And there’s this from when Morsi was in power:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/24/opinion/the-copts-and-the-arab-spring.html?_r=0
Last month a peaceful march protesting the destruction of a church in upper Egypt was broken up by police and army troops in central Cairo. Twenty- seven people were killed, some of them run over by military vehicles, and more than 300 people were injured.
Bob-1 thinks you should be able to call base.
I am also not for killing protesters but lets not forget what they were protesting for and the recent events in Egypt at the time.
Obama didn’t even send a junior undersecretary of meaningless nothings to the Paris rally. He pimp slapped them, those xenophobic clingers marching at rally that’s not aimed at ending racist US abuse and oppression, marking the vast Paris march as less authentic and socially important than an angry mindless mob burning down an auto parts store in Ferguson Missouri.
The narrative Obama wants is one where we seek to understand the frustrations of a black African Muslim (a civil rights trifecta) who finds himself driven to violence in a kosher deli in Paris, and whether the Kouachi brothers are really a cover alias for the Koch brothers.
The problem for muslims is Islam. Muslims are just people like everyone else, but Islam is definably evil. Being muslim makes it difficult to extricate from Islam (since it’s part of the definition and culture) but nothing less will do. Islam itself, because it’s got deception at its core, is not fixable.
Some muslim that is a genuinely good person, because deception is a core feature of Islam, just becomes a useful tool of the evil. It’s a religion of peace, don’t ya know?
I agree, Obama is a useful indicator of the wrong side of any issue or wrong side of any govt. to support, but you have to be careful of the issues he doesn’t care about.