In the news:
The National Endowment for the Arts has granted $100,000 to artist Andres
Serrano to create an art work to be called "Piss Mohammed."
The Brooklyn Museum will sponsor an exhibit by British artist Chris Ofili, in which the Prophet Mohammed is covered in dung and magazine cut-outs of male genitalia.
Playwright Terence McNally’s new show will soon appear on Broadway. In Brokeback Mohammed, the Prophet and his early followers are depicted as homosexuals whose idea of prayer was to form “daisy chains” facing Mecca. The play could not have been produced without the support of fellow playwright Tony Kushner. McNally and Kushner have both said that they will brave fatwas against them, if necessary, in the fight against religious intolerance and on behalf of freedom of expression.
New York Times columnist Frank Rich has celebrated the Brooklyn Museum exhibit and the coming McNally play, and the Times editorial page has published the Danish editorial cartoons mocking the Prophet. Moreover, the newspaper has announced that, for the rest of the year, it will give a gift of a copy of Salman Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses, to every new subscriber.
In the ACLU’s newest campaign, it demands that the federal government revoke the tax-exempt status of all mosques that criticize the government or attack America. The organization has also threatened to sue any and all public schools promoting Islam, and demands that any school board and/or administrator guilty of continuing such propagation, be arrested.
Members of the Jewish Brotherhood have been firebombing the embassies and consulates of Moslem nations, calling for the death of Moslem editors, in protest against the blaspheming of Judaism and the anti-Semitic
cartoons routinely published in Moslem newspapers, and brandishing signs with messages like “Massacre those who insult
Judaism.”
Article comments
1 - gazelle
Thank you for a brilliantly satirized article, whose last para is also a 'News Flash' and not true.
Thank you also for gathering the best stereotypes that an extremist could possiblt want - muslim, jew, christian, secularist and animist.
And finally, thanks for airing the dirty laundry - for all to see - that cannot - even if one tried the best quantum bleach - be whitewashed of its inherent intolerant racism.
I leave you with Tariq Ali in the Guardian "This Is The Real Outrage":
French philosophers did take humanity forward by recognising no external authority of any kind, but there was a darker side. Voltaire: "Blacks are inferior to Europeans, but superior to apes." Hume: "The black might develop certain attributes of human beings, the way the parrot manages to speak a few words." There is much more in a similar vein from their colleagues. It is this aspect of the Enlightenment that appears to be more in tune with some of the generalised anti-Muslim ravings in the media.
best
2 - adam
Brilliant. Thanks for a great laugh. And a great point. Will check out your blog.
Adam Ash.
3 - gazelle
... nonetheless, i enjoyed the humour.
4 - Bliffle
So, gazelle, what is NOT true in the last paragraph of the article? Is it this sentence: "Islam is the world's most intolerant, bellicose religion; for Moslems, "tolerance" is but a euphemism for submission to Islam."?
5 - Dave Nalle
Great stuff. If only just a few of those things would become half true the world would be a more sensible place.
I did find the last paragraph a bit ironic. If you took out the word 'islam' and replaced it with 'communism' the paragraph would have made just as much sense 30 years ago.
Dave
6 - gazelle
you guessed it, Bliffle.
Dave, dream on.
Problem is, it is useful for the US to find an enemy, be it the old ally the soviet union - communism, or one to replace it - islam.
But will islam acquiece? and become the enemy, and agree to die a death in slow decline? - like the communist ideology?
And i thought the cold war was over - it is not - not in the US. and neither can islam be fitted ito the 'communist' mould - despite the rhetoric.
George Washington, I am sure knew what a 'war against the King' was, but wouldn't he be baffled by a war against 'terrorism', and if he figured terror came from Palestinians, which side would he place himself on. and Tom Paine? Yor guess is as good as mine.
Or is this really a war against 'Islam' undertaken on the model of the war against 'Communism', but recorded as the war on 'terrorism'.
Or are there a number of wars being fought against different enemies lumped together by a bond of terror, an axis of evil?
Against rebels, al-qaeda, saddam hussein, against iran, taliban, freedom fighters, against colonial rule, all of the above, or simply the global 'outrage' at US foreign policy that is short-term narrow-minded and changes in fits and starts. Tell Kim-Il Sung to hang on.
So it makes sense to have a 'War against Outrage' - and correct some mistakes. Or would George deny chopping down the cherry tree.
7 - Nicholas Stix
"#1 from Gazelle
"Thank you for a brilliantly satirized article, whose last para is also a 'News Flash' and not true.
"Thank you also for gathering the best stereotypes that an extremist could possiblt want - muslim, jew, christian, secularist and animist.
"And finally, thanks for airing the dirty laundry - for all to see - that cannot - even if one tried the best quantum bleach - be whitewashed of its inherent intolerant racism.
"I leave you with Tariq Ali in the Guardian 'This Is The Real Outrage':
"French philosophers did take humanity forward by recognising no external authority of any kind, but there was a darker side. Voltaire: 'Blacks are inferior to Europeans, but superior to apes.' Hume: 'The black might develop certain attributes of human beings, the way the parrot manages to speak a few words.' There is much more in a similar vein from their colleagues. It is this aspect of the Enlightenment that appears to be more in tune with some of the generalised anti-Muslim ravings in the media.
"best"
Response from Stix:
Other than your attempt to confuse readers, just what does your post have to do with my essay? Are you trying to say that those who mock murderers are worse than the murderers? If so, you are just the sort of nihilist who paves the way for nazis, communists, and Moslems to make the rivers and gutters run red with blood.
And what does my essay have to do with race? I hate to break it to you, but Moslems do not constitute a race.
Do you realize that you said that everything in my essay but the last paragraph is true?
“Thank you for a brilliantly satirized article, whose last para is also a 'News Flash' and not true.”
Since my last paragraph says that the previous ones are not true, if that paragraph is not true, the previous ones are. So, according to you, Andres Serrano is creating an “art work” called "Piss Mohammed," Chris Ofili is doing a dung and genital cut-out number on Mohammed, Terence McNally did write a gay Mohammed play called Brokeback Mohammed, and so on.
A little bit of logic (not to mention, grammar) goes a long way.
And what on earth is the following paragraph about? I’ll bet you don’t know yourself.
“And finally, thanks for airing the dirty laundry - for all to see - that cannot - even if one tried the best quantum bleach - be whitewashed of its inherent intolerant racism.”
I’ll bet that you run around with that “racism” line in your pocket all the time, and can’t control yourself, in your need to beat people into submission with it. And so you whip out your weapon, whether it is appropriate or even relevant. I believe the law calls that, “indecent exposure.”
Tariq Ali’s pathetic little politicking against David Hume, Voltaire, et al., is just so much rhetorical gravy. (Ali almost certainly never read Hume; that line has been floating around pc academia for years, spread by other “anti-racists” who excepting one guy who had to take the trouble to read some Hume, likewise never read the great Scot.)
Likewise, your buddy, Tariq Ali, plays the race card, even though no race is handy.
(Interestingly, when race does play a role, it is to the Moslems' discredit. Moslem immigrants in Europe and Australia do fancy themselves a separate “race,” exhibit a psychotic racism towards the native Europeans and Aussies, and have for several years made a sport of hunting down and gang-raping native girls. In Australia, they call their victims “white sluts” while raping them; I am not familiar with the gutter French equivalent. Moslem immigrants in both countries also routinely engage in gang assaults on native men, but I have not yet been able to ascertain whether the Moslems also gang-rape men.)
The upshot of your post, its logical and grammatical problems notwithstanding, is that you support Islamic terrorism. Your problems, in addition to logic and grammar, are moral and rhetorical. Moral: You insinuate that it is
Not Moslems, who slaughter 3,000 non-combatants in one fell swoop;
Not Moslems, who kidnap, terrorize, and behead innocents;
Not Moslems, who shoot Jewish babies dead in their cribs, and who seek to rob an entire people of their country and murder them all, Nazi-style;
Not Moslems, who riot, murder (Moslems and non-Moslems alike), and demand obeisance to their murderous, rapine, dishonorable prophet;
Not Moslems, who treat all non-Moslems under their power (“dhimmis”) worse than they do animals;
And not Moslems, compared to whom the Danish cartoonists behave like converts, who are the bad guys, but rather those upon whom they make war.
Likewise, though Tariq Ali declares himself an atheist, he supports Jihad for purely political reasons, which he seeks to hide behind a smokescreen of “anti-racism.”
(BTW, for my readers’ information, the biggest slave masters in human history have been Arabs.)
Your rhetorical problem is that you are repeating talking points that only work with an audience of people who are either opportunistic Western supporters of Jihad (usually communists, but sometimes rabid anti-Semites who hate Jews more than they love their own country) or Westerners who are so cowardly, and so whipped by the communists that they will not speak up for themselves against their enemies, even when their survival hangs in the balance.
Guess what, Pal? I’m neither a communist nor someone whipped by communists, and neither are most of the people reading this.
8 - Nicholas Stix
#2 Adam:
"Brilliant. Thanks for a great laugh. And a great point. Will check out your blog.
Adam Ash."
Thanks, Adam.
9 - Nicholas Stix
#5 from Dave Nalle.
Great stuff. If only just a few of those things would become half true the world would be a more sensible place.
I did find the last paragraph a bit ironic. If you took out the word 'islam' and replaced it with 'communism' the paragraph would have made just as much sense 30 years ago.
Dave
Thanks, Dave.
Your response made me think. Your last sentence is true; why is this the case? Is it because all forms of totalitarianism are similar; or because Moslems have mastered (which ain't all that hard, after all) the rhetoric of multiculturalism, in which those politically deemed "non-white," no matter how vicious, can intimidate those politically deemed "white" by accusing them of "intolerance," "racism," etc?
Nicholas
10 - Baronius
Dang, the Coulter Plan isn't real?
Gazelle, Washington would have understood the War on Terror. He fought a battle against piracy. It was tough going; the enemy was divided into independent cells with different motivations. The war rolled along, generally unsuccessfully, until Jefferson sent the Marines after the country which sponsored many of the pirates.
11 - Bliffle
gazelle,
What should lead one to a conclusion contrary to:
"Islam is the world's most intolerant, bellicose religion; for Moslems, "tolerance" is but a euphemism for submission to Islam."?
What would lead one to believe that islam is tolerant and does not have a hair-trigger for bellicosity? What?
12 - gazelle
Stix:
My comment:
Thank you for a brilliantly satirized article, whose last para is also a 'News Flash' and not true.
was a direct response (in the satirical spirit of your article) to the first sentence of the last para of your article:None of the above "news flashes" is true. But why should individuals, agencies, propaganda organs and governments not work to make them true? Islam is the world's most intolerant, bellicose religion; for Moslems, "tolerance" is but a euphemism for submission to Islam. And so, why should non-Moslems not give Moslems a dose of their own medicine, or at the very least, apply their usual practices to Islam?
This para is also the one with the least, if at all, satire or humor. It states that the news flashes are untrue, it raises two questions which ask why the 'above news flashes' cannot be made to come true, and it makes one direct 'assertion' which is clearly untrue. I'll come to this a little later.++++
I like the witty logic when you wrote about the para:
Since my last paragraph says that the previous ones are not true, if that paragraph is not true, the previous ones are.
But, if this makes the 'above news flashes' true, logically, then, when you come to the last para again, this time it would make the last para true, hence the 'above news flashes' untrue again, ad infinitum... : who shaves the barber who shaves only those people who don't shave themselves.++++
However logic not being in question, lets take grammar. In the last para, apart from the news flashes being untrue statement, the only assertion is that:
Islam is the world's most intolerant, bellicose religion; for Moslems, "tolerance" is but a euphemism for submission to Islam.
Hard to figure out as it is, Bliffle guessed it, this is what i said was not true - the actual subject matter of this exchange. And grammar and meaning, rather than logic, is what is involved in making 'statements' and 'things' 'true' or not. Have patience. Lets see...++++
As I said I found the 'news flashes' funny. Yes, this is the spirit in which I was commenting. Except that when I reached the last para, I was struck by the seriousness of the bias behind the humor. And I take it you want to defend that truth - rather than get the readers all 'confused' - like I did some with my comments[!]
You ask what my comment had to do with your article: I was pointing to the anti-Islam and racist, yes racist, character of 'the last para' and thus the premises of the article. Just imagine what piqued ADL lawyers would do if they took on the defamation of Muslims - in a refocusing of aims.
++++
Now to get to the heart of the matter, the truly funny role reversal you propose between your fictionalized 'Islam' and the 'west', 'christians', and 'jews', is as simple as replacing the most non-conservative of neocons with the most non-muslim of todays muslims. Gwb for Obl [Click], Kristol for Zawahiri, Strauss for Qutb. The result, I assure you, is not going to be any different from what we see today. These are hardly examples of the meaning of tolerance. What you propose is deeply intolerant. Tolerance would become a truly scarce resource.
I, with many others west or east, christian, jew, muslim, hindu or atheist do reject both of these camps. If you mock the murderers, so do most who profess Islam. And no thanks, you have me figured wrong as a nihilist, communist, coward, or preparer of bloodbath - the categories aren't numerous enough for me.
And exactly what distinction, if any, have you made between ordinary muslims - the majority - who have nothing to do with these two camps, those who are extremists, and those who actually stand against the extremists. I suppose all are damned, and do all those nice things from Australia to the US against 'white' people (and no one else), that you give as evidence in your comment[#7] to support your one assertion in your last para:
Islam is the world's most intolerant, bellicose religion; for Moslems, "tolerance" is but a euphemism for submission to Islam.
And to Bliffle, inflamer of conflict, who says:What would lead one to believe that islam is tolerant and does not have a hair-trigger for bellicosity? What?
I have Nothing [Click] for you except tolerance,and the Hume ["great Scot"] quote and source.
best
13 - Bliffle
gazelle:
"And to Bliffle, inflamer of conflict, who says:
What would lead one to believe that islam is tolerant and does not have a hair-trigger for bellicosity? What?
I have Nothing [Click] for you except tolerance,
and the Hume ["great Scot"] quote and source.
"
The Hume citation is irrelevant.
14 - gazelle
Bliffle:
you are welcome - to call the Hume's view of "one negroe as a man of parts and learning; ... 'tis likely he is admired for very slender accomplishments like a parrot" as irrelevant to the wholesale statement such as
Islam is the world's most intolerant, bellicose religion; for Moslems, "tolerance" is but a euphemism for submission to Islam.
as if there are no rights, freedoms, law, intelligence, love and forgiveness, worth talking about to a person from the "west".Hey You Muslims: Reform yourself, become 'moderate' - then you're okay, as long as you dont talk about the sharia!
Submit.
Sorry this, as Pipes and Flemming Rose, are xeroxing each other on the right, will not work.
It is definitely a cultural negotiation. not war.
What will work is getting heads together as frattini is saying, and getting down to each concept and nuance of freedom, love, et cetera, and work from there - without compromise on basic rights. That's not Pipes and that's not Rose.
best
15 - Bliffle
The Hume citation is irrelevant, Hume did not speak for any religion (to say that he did is to confess ones ignorance of Humes writings), and he didn't speak for any political movement or position. Plus, it sounds so uncharacteristic of Hume that it is probably inaccurate or apochryphal. Can you give a direct citation to Humes writings or do you only have the second hand statement of Tariq Ali? Do you care that the citation be accurate? Do you think Hume is so important in western thought that thus slandering Hume strikes a blow against the foes of Islam? Alas, I fear you are deluded, as hardly a person in 100 of western population has any idea of who David Hume might have been.
16 - gazelle
Bliffle:
there are three links above in comment # 12. The last line goes to the citation. I care if it is accurate. it is only to point that there is an underside to the 'Enlightenment' project, such as racism, which continues to plague societies which 'consider themselves 'enlightened'. They are enlightened of the burden, if only through a continuing arrogance of ethnicity, religious group, conveniently labelled 'race' - which actually is just a usless old concept now anyway.
17 - prophet mohammed (pbum)
Everybody hates me now...please take a look at my official website and you'll see that i'm actually a nice bloke! www.prophetmohammed.co.uk
cheers!