Americans don’t like it. Not even Democrats. And with good reason.
There are many good people who are Muslims, but Islam is a problem. We are not at war with Muslims, but Islam is at war with us, and has been since it was founded, thirteen-hundred years ago.
[Update a few minutes later]
After the latest mass murder, CAIR’s push for sharia rolls on.
[Update a few more minuts later]
More from Andy McCarthy: Is Islam a religion?
I’d say no. It’s a totalitarian ideology masquerading as a religion. Which may be one reason that, unlike other religions, the Left seems to have an affinity toward it.
[Friday-afternoon update]
The hidden reason Americans dislike Islam. They know military people who have first-hand experience with it:
Yes, they were in the middle of a war — but speaking from my own experience — the war was conducted from within a culture that was shockingly broken. I expected the jihadists to be evil, but even I couldn’t fathom the depths of their depravity. And it was all occurring against the backdrop of a brutally violent and intolerant culture. Women were beaten almost as an afterthought, there was a near-total lack of empathy for even friends and neighbors, lying was endemic, and sexual abuse was rampant. Even more disturbingly, it seemed that every problem was exacerbated the more religious and pious a person (or village) became. I spent enough time outside the wire and interacting with tribal leaders to get a sense of the reality around me, but the younger guys on the line spent weeks at a time living in the heart of the local community. I remember one young soldier, after describing the things he’d seen since the start of the deployment, gestured towards the village around us and said — in perfect Army English — “Sir, this s**t is f**ked up.”
Yup. There are millions of good Muslims, but Islam is a big problem, and has been for over a millennium.
What bothers me is that so many fixate on terrorism when it comes to Islam. That’s flat out wrong.
Terrorism isn’t the problem, it’s a comparatively minor symptom. The real problem is that a large percentage is Muslims believe in, and adhere to, a culture that’s inherently incompatible with civilized values.
The question that needs to be asked is what percentage of Muslims favor sharia law? Pew is one of the few organizations looking onto this, and Pew is, ideologically, on the left, so I don’t think their data is biased toward a conservative POV. http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-overview/
The facts are pretty clear. The effects are also pretty clear; in areas where you have large scale immigration from areas where these fascist, barbaric (sharia) support is high, you get trouble. Trump caused a firestorm by saying that parts of London are so bad thanks to radical Muslims that they are no-go areas where even the police are afraid. I spend a lot of time over there, including Islamic areas of Birmingham, and Trump’s only error was he understated the problem. I can also attest that the nature of the Islamic areas in the UK has changed dramatically for the worse in the past two decades.
All the focus in ISIS and terror has a major downside; it’s ignoring the barbaric views held by over half of the world’s Muslims.
I’d encourage anyone who wants to understand this issue to start by reading sharia law. I especially encourage this of anyone on the left, because sharia is the diametric opposite of everything you claim you believe in.
But we have our own religion which we haven’t been deploying effectively against it. I think it’s time the Pope announced that any Muslim who rejects Islam and becomes a Christian will get not merely 72, but 100 virgins, and they don’t even have to blow themselves up.
Let’s simply outbid them!
I imagine 72 virgins is a lot more tempting in a culture where women are chattel. The Christian view of gaining Paradise without having to earn it, Christ having paid the price, seems a lot more promising.
I would be happy with the Metropolitan museum showing art work of Mohammed, just to show they are not bound by Sharia law.
Americans have said similar things about Catholicism, Judaism, Mormonism, Hinduism, and doubtless other religions (and some still say those things today). Fear of and/or hatred for alien religions with alien beliefs seems to be practically human nature, and the horrible consequences of that are recorded through history. But we can try to learn from experience, and our experience has been that in this country, at least, scary-seeming religions have turned out to be completely compatible with American ideals. That has certainly been the case with Islam in America.
American Muslims are Americans. They are part of what makes ours a great country. Attacking their faith as “a totalitarian ideology masquerading as a religion” is hurtful bigotry.
That has certainly been the case with Islam in America.
Actually, it has not been. Sorry, but that “hurtful bigotry” is the truth. Boo hoo.
Jim, the percentage of Muslims in the US is roughly similar to the percentage of Hindus and Buddhists. The reason Americans react differently to Islam compared to the other two aforementioned is there’s a reason to do so; a large percentage of Muslims favor Sharia law, and Sharia absolutely is a barbaric, totalitarian, murderous creed. The percentage is low amongst American Muslims, but it’s high (solid majorities) amongst middle eastern and north African Muslims. Keeping those out is simple sanity, nothing less.
Islam isn’t seemingly scary, it is scary, and for very sound reasons that go far beyond terrorism.
the percentage of Muslims in the US is roughly similar to the percentage of Hindus and Buddhists.
There’s another reason beyond Sharia law. Even the NYT unwittingly put their finger on it. This small population of 1 to 2% of the US population is committing as many mass murders as the rest of the 98% combined. If Buddhists and Hindus were this prolific, then we would be worried about them as well.
It is rational to have a distrust, when the people you distrust call you the devil and say you should be killed.
@ Leyland;
I agree completely. That’s what I was trying to say in my post when I bought up the three religions, but you said it far better.
CJ, what you wrote it just fine, especially in the context of the Rotherham trials. I just don’t think Jim is capable of drawing that connection. Especially when he gets his news from the NYTimes, which isn’t covering the current trials, although they wrote several articles in the past questioning the undue attention to immigrants involved in the case.
“It is rational to have a distrust, when the people you distrust call you the devil and say you should be killed.”
Exactly. Jim is focused on Americans views of Islam, overlooking Democrats far more intense bashing of other religions but also overlooking the Islamic world’s views of Americans, not just Christians and Jews but atheists, neo-pagans, Wiccans, Satanists, gays, women, Republicans, and even Democrats. Many of these groups have antagonistic relationships and some were even created out of antagonism but for the most part, they are not trying to kill each other.
I suspect Democrats defend radical extremist Islam so much because it is antagonistic toward groups Democrats don’t like but also because it is escapism to avoid the reality that radical extremist Islamic ideology is pervasive in the Muslim world and is also directed at groups Democrats do like, such as gays, women, neo-pagans, atheists, Wiccans, Pastafarians, Democrats, and Americans in general.
By being upset at people that feel a little uneasy about being targeted for genocide and systematic persecution, it allows Democrats to falsely believe that our problems with the Islamic world are only because of Republicans, Christians, or Israel rather than the Islamic world’s views of non-Muslims. They are engaging in mass delusion and victim blaming.
How dare these people be upset that hundreds of millions of people view them as unfit to exist, if only they didn’t take offense, the Islamic world would totally love the USA and especially the more enlightened progressives who have transcended to a higher plane of existence than these other humans. None of this would be happening if it wasn’t for the outgroup.
When you defend the Christians as much as you do Muslims, when you agree there are smear campaigns against Christians, then I will listen to you. Until then, you’re a partisan hack.
Anti-Christian bigotry is as wrong as anti-Muslim bigotry. I disagree with any suggestion that we bar Christian visitors, or bar refugees, or the notion that Christians aren’t suitable candidates for high public office. Those are offensive things to say about any religion.
For what it’s worth, here are the FBI statistics on the victims of religious hate crimes in 2013:
60.3 percent were victims of crimes motivated by their offenders’ anti-Jewish bias.
13.7 percent were victims of anti-Islamic (Muslim) bias.
6.1 percent were victims of anti-Catholic bias.
4.3 percent were victims of bias against groups of individuals of varying religions (anti-multiple religions, group).
3.8 percent were victims of anti-Protestant bias.
0.6 percent were victims of anti-Atheist/Agnostic bias.
11.2 percent were victims of bias against other religions (anti-other religion).
Jews and Muslims, in particular, are victimized far out of proportion to their numbers.
I’m not even sure Jim read Jon’s comment. He certainly didn’t understand it if he did.
Once again, I have to agree with Comrade Jim. And I’ll go one step further.
American members of the Westboro Baptist Church, American members of the KKK, American Nazis, American members of NAMBLA are Americans. They are part of what makes ours a great country. Attacking their faith as “a totalitarian ideology masquerading as a religion” is hurtful bigotry.
For those keeping score, the death count from the Westboro Baptist church remains at zero.
Yes, but they’re so icky, that it’s almost the same as them having murdered 6 million people.
Jim, replete with smug assuredness, sits on the edge of his desk, pipe in mouth. A leather patched elbow from a tweed blazer sits cupped in his other hand. Chin raised high, he pontificates:
Fear of and/or hatred for alien religions with alien beliefs seems to be practically human nature, and the horrible consequences of that are recorded through history.
A student raises his hand. “Teacher,” he asks, “aren’t Muslims the reason we have to go through airport security, take off our shoes and make grandma get patted down?”
“Quiet. You don’t want to be a hurtful bigot, do you?”
He hasn’t said but I imagine he supports banning those on the terror watch lists from buying guns without realizing the latent Islamophobia of it.
Banning those on the terror watch lists from buying guns strikes me as a bad idea that would be unlikely to accomplish anything. Restricting people’s actions based on secret lists seems like a bad idea in general.
Mark your calendars, folks, for today is the day that Jim and I agree on something.
Jim, it’s time to enter the 21st century. The right don’t care what names you call us any more. If opposing those who believe women should wear tents and gays should be thrown from tall buildings makes me a bigot, I wear the name with pride.
BTW, a few weeks ago I was talking to a Buddhist whose attitude to Islam made Trump’s look calm and considerate. And I never saw anyone complain as much about Muslim immigration to the UK as my Muslim friends, who’d moved there to escape the very people Western governments are now importing en masse.
But, of course, the left don’t care. They want mass Muslim immigration because the immigrants overwhelmingly vote for left-wing parties. If women have to wear tents and gays get thrown off tall buildings, well, that’s a small price to pay for political power.
ear of and/or hatred for alien religions with alien beliefs seems to be practically human nature, and the horrible consequences of that are recorded through history.
Islam demonstrates that in spades. I think we could import a lot of Muslims and still have less harm to our society than the people, such as you, who think evil is just fine, if it belongs to the right group.
Attacking their faith as “a totalitarian ideology masquerading as a religion” is hurtful bigotry.
Even though it is true. Maybe we should rethink our positions on the Nazis and Fascists too, eh? They’re just faiths being attacked as “totalitarian ideologies”. While true, that’s just hurtful bigotry too.
The taqiyya of the progjihadi.
I recently made an argument for an alternative to direct military force, which although effective in limited areas isn’t going to address the root problem, which is Islam.
So, my approach would be to attack their weakness, which is the rigidity and certainty that is Islam. It’s a very brittle belief system because it demands that every adherent believe absolutely everything contained in the Koran as absolutely true. They can debate the Hadith to a good extent because the accounts come from a variety of witnesses whose testimony has to be weighed like any witness (the one part of Islamic jurisprudence that shows logic and reason), but if any part of the Koran is false then the whole thing must be false, because God doesn’t lie.
They’ve thrown logic out the window by arguing that even if some bizarre commandment (such as stoning women) doesn’t make sense to humans, it is best for us and Allah is infinitely smarter than we are. I would venture that among all the trouble makers, there isn’t a trace of doubt in the absolute perfection of the Koran, though the foot soldiers may have large areas of ignorance about certain parts.
For example, The Mind of the Traveller is a respected text on sharia. Right at the start it explains that good and bad cannot be determined by reason, only by the sacred texts. The believers are aso admonished against thinking deeply about religion, as opposed to obeying it.
That’s pounded home.
But we in the West have a crucial advantage, our own religion of the Torah and New Testament, which we’ve have studied, dissected, and analyzed for centuries in the way we have to tear apart everything looking for kernels of meaning or clues as to origins, the kind of things you learn in university religious studies departments or from a lifetime of open-minded inquiry. Muhammed reworked many Old and New Testament stories into the Koran, based partly on what he heard from the Christians and Jews in Saudi Arabia. He had no way of knowing which stories would later be dismissed by many of those Christians and Jews as devices meant to advance the plot or settle some long standing dispute. He didn’t know which stories would get rejected as ridiculous crap (false teachings!) by the very experts on those stories who’ve studied them far longer than any Muslim.
We are in a position to correct some of their mistaken information, even under their own rule sets for the Hadith (we’re going back to far more primary sources on them), and Islam cannot survive a single fundamental correction. Muslim reformers point this out, and it’s why the laws demanding death for apostasy or heresy are still on the books 1,300 years later. Pull one thread and the whole thing unravels.
If Christians go on a rant about the Jews and their idiotic story about Noah’s ark, Muslims will at first listen because it’s Christians ranting about Jews. But if in that rant the Christians show that the story is idiotic nonsense because it’s a failed attempt to rework an earlier ridiculous Babylonian polytheistic story about the flood into an even more ridiculous monotheistic one, a version that even God wouldn’t touch because he’d be mocked and laughed at, you will have embedded a whole lot of facts in their head before they realize that Muhammed’s version of Noah (Nu) must likewise be bullshit. And if the story is false, God couldn’t have written it, and if God didn’t write it, then Muhammed was lying.
You could do much the same with stories about Moses (even Rabbis admit that there’s just no way Jews were ever Egyptian slaves), Abraham, and many others, but the point is that by “taking one for the team”, we can become absolutely toxic to Islam. The thoughts we freely express can act as tetracycline and penicillin would to an infection, completely fatal to Islamic belief – without ever once attacking Islam or Muslims. We can just be non-fertile soil where Islamic belief goes to die, leaving an apostate standing in a devout Muslim’s clothes. The apostate might ask us about Jesus, or about Buddha, or about science, but he’s probably going to give up on the 72 virgins.
There are atheists in all Islamic countries, but what they don’t have is Western ammunition, from us, the experts on the stories Muhammed worked into the Koran. Break the certainty and you end the problem – forever, while freeing the minds of about a billion and a half people.
Christianity is extremely robust about uncertainty. Nothing hinges on how many fish Jesus really handed out, or if he did at all. Islam is not. It’s a very powerful but very fragile belief system. Don’t attack its strength directly, use its strength against it.
Most Americans say that Islamic beliefs are incompatible with American beliefs, and that is true. But I’m saying that if you actually mix those beliefs in close and direct contact, instead of creating “safe spaces”, the Islamic ones die leaving the American ones unharmed. If we bring on the mixing, laid out above, the West will be a place where Muslims become apostates, and since they’re all connected via the Internet, their beliefs might all get wiped out at the grass roots in a couple of years, just as with any cult, or they’re going to cut contact and return to the seventh century.
The only way Islam will be beaten is to have the better society. Here, the obvious weakness is that Allah clearly favors the supposedly corrupt societies of the supposedly heathens over the supposedly righteous societies of the supposedly faithful.
Muslims can certainly assimilate into our society. For many years, we had no problems with our Muslim population but American Muslims were very different than those in Middle Eastern countries. Even Nation of Islam is different than how Islam is practiced in the Old World.
Assimilation is a generational process, especially when the original culture is so far removed from our own, and open borders do not help the process out.
Assimilation works better when immigration rates are limited. It also works better when immigration policy favors those not overtly hostile to the existing culture. Obozo seems intent on importing as many of the worst as he can.
Yes, rewarding our enemies and punishing our friends. For a long time people have been complaining that our interpreters from Iraq and Afghanistan can’t get into the USA. Those are the people we should be helping. And even in Iraq, the people who helped us the most are now suffering the most under Obama’s policies. The Sunnis in Anbar are probably none to happy at being abandoned and then having Iranian’s Shia proxy militias inflicted on them.
For a long time people have been complaining that our interpreters from Iraq and Afghanistan can’t get into the USA. Those are the people we should be helping.
We should definitely help many, many more of them. One reason that so few have gotten asylum in the U.S. is the onerous screening; everyone involved is afraid that they’ll be blamed if they let in a terrorist. The current political atmosphere is not going to help.
the onerous screening
BS. We now know the screening doesn’t include vetting the information provided on the visa. Further, it doesn’t (and probably shouldn’t) include reviewing their comments made in social media.
“Onerous” screening. Hilarious.
“Assimilation is a generational process”
The early Muslim immigrants to the UK largely assimilated, because a) they came to the UK because they knew it was a better place to live than where they came from and b) they didn’t have much choice.
It’s their kids who have been blowing people and beheading them in the streets.
That seems to hold true in the USA too.
American Muslims were very different than those in Middle Eastern countries
True. Not only that, but Muslims in Indonesia are very different from Muslims in Nigeria. Muslims in Sweden are very different from Muslims in Yemen. Muslims in Kurdistan are very different from Muslims in Kuwait. Which is yet another reason why it’s wrong to set up Islam as a monolithic thing that we should oppose.
I doubt you know very much about any of those countries.
And yet every one of those countries has produced a lot of ISIS fighters who went to Syria, and most of them have their own branches of ISIS.
Have any of you been reading Scott Adams blog? Read it in the past but not regularly. Saw a link on Twitter, maybe from Scott Adams, a few weeks back and now check in every couple days. It is a perspective unlike anything you will see anywhere in the mainstream media and the comments are really entertaining too.
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/134922324241/the-trump-immigration-surprise-the-trap-is
This was the interesting part and as good an explanation of Trump’s popularity as any:
“The general form of it involves an educated guess about a person’s inner thoughts. When you tell people what they are thinking, while they are thinking it, and while they think their thoughts are mostly concealed, they hand you the keys to their brain. (It would take longer to explain why.)
Other candidates tell voters what they should think. Sometimes they say what voters do think, but they do so only for obvious issues such as voters preferring lower crime rates. You won’t see a vanilla politician tell you what your secret inner thoughts are, and get it right. The latter is industrial-grade persuasion. The former is just lips moving.”
Trump is nothing if not a good salesman. He understand Madison Avenue techniques.
AND he saw how successful one can be by watching Obama. Obama did the same thing: told a bunch of people what they wanted to hear and they fell for it like an egg fro a tall chicken.
AND just like Obama, Trump isn’t saying how he’d do all this and if one thinks about some if Trump’s ideas it’s clear they aren’t workable.
But after 7 years of Obama lies and dissembling coupled with McConnell and Boehner’s big words at election time but no delivery, the Conservatives are thirsting to hear someone big in the public say the things that have been on their minds…..
Things the Fascist Democrats have worked to make off limits in acceptable discussions.
So when Trump says those things, that emotional connection is made.
I listen to radio talk show hosts ask Trumpists (or Trumpeters if you like) what they like about him. They say it’s what he says. Fair enough. But when asked the second level questions: How will Trump do this? What makes you think he’ll deliver? etc…
they become tongue tied.
Obama got in through sheer emotional stupidity. Trump is playing the same game.
Trump is the white Obama but with some key differences; he loves his country, he has experience, and he is somewhat competent. I don’t know how corrupt and vindictive Trump is though. Would he use the IRS to target dissidents? Would he engage in crony capitalism?
Trump works in the environment as it exists, so I am sure he has done his fair share of lobbying for favors. However, he currently has the appearance that he isn’t taking money from wealthy companies and individuals. There is an element of economic populism to his campaign, he has said he wants to tax the rich.
Two of Democrat’s key voting blocks are economic populists and racialists. The economic populists are rallying around Bernie Sanders but in the end, Hillary will be the candidate. Democrats don’t have a choice, just illusion of a choice. Will the socialists be enthusiastic supporters of Hillary? Surely, but she has a weakness here considering her financial ties to the Clinton Foundation and Wall Street. Trump could maybe steal some votes or depress their turnout.
The other voting block is more critical. Racialists are what got Obama elected and Hillary is counting on mobilizing them but after generations of Democrat rule, anger is being directed at Democrats rather than at who Democrats scapegoat as being the problem. The time is ripe for Trump or some other Republican to turn the black vote away from the Democrats.
People have been engaging in large protests all across the country. We have all seen how heated those protests are. Democrats have been stoking them, hoping to get them to the polls and vote against Republicans, who have absolutely nothing to do with how Democrat cities are run. A little persuasive jujitsu could turn all that energy against Democrats and suddenly their metropolis’ are not a guaranteed lock.
The race/nazi cards are overplayed. They have no meaning. I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump won over both blacks and hispanics. People claim he is anti-immigrant but many legal immigrants like his proposals. I don’t know how Trump would govern but I think he can win.
A good observation. In other words, he’s anti-immigration without being anti-immigration against a key voting demographic which happens to be pro-immigration.
There’s a really interesting Memri video of a former Saudi Shura Council member talking about Muslim culture.