Thursday, August 26, 2010

Breaking the Fast in Morocco

Below is a report in French about Ramadan in Morocco. At one time Morocco was tolerant of people who declined to fast during the holy month, but all that has changed. Increasing fundamentalist pressure on Muslims to comply with strict Islamic rules includes the threat of jail for those who fail to observe the fast.

Many thanks to Gaia for the translation and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:



Whenever someone tells you that “Islam needs a Reformation”, point out the object lesson of Morocco…
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Morocco used to be one of the most tolerant of Islamic countries, with a significant population of secularized Muslims and a partiality towards its neighbors across the Mediterranean in Spain and France. But the wave of Islamic revival which has passed over the Muslim world during the last thirty years has affected Morocco, too.

Islam is reforming. In places like Somalia, Islam has reformed.

Calling for reform implies that Islam should return to its true spiritual values, and that is exactly what is happening now in Morocco, Tunisia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and all those other parts of the Muslim world which used to be considered “relaxed” in their observance of Islamic practices.

An “Islamic Reformation” is already underway. Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Yusef al-Qaradawi, Mullah Omar, and Anjem Choudary are just a few of its zealous champions. In another decade or two the process of reform will be nearing completion.

Don’t wish for Islamic reform. You just might get what you wish for.

11 comments:

goethechosemercy said...

Islam is incapable of reform by any means.
All it can do is react, react, and act.
There is no reason in Islam.
There is no reflection in Islam.
So there can be no reform.
No problems can be solved.

Anonymous said...

When I was in Bosnia, I was invited into the home of a local farmer. He served plum wine to me and the other guests. I asked him how this was permissible since Islam forbids it.

He responded, "yes, we are Moslem, but we are not good Moslems."

Therein lies the salvation os Islam: Moslems who do not take their religion seriously. Judaism and Christianity both have large groups who practice this way. It is only natural that Isalm would follow on their own path to atheism and secularism.

Fjordman said...

Hale: Read my essay On the Illusion of a Moderate Islam. It addresses this very issue. Sooner or later, "lax Islam" is going to be replaced by somebody who takes Islam seriously. The analogy with Judaism or Christianity is false.

dienw said...

I think it is time for those who keep saying Christianity has reformed to stop and think: When Christianity reformed, or those Christians who were able to do so without being burnt at the stake, it returned to the bible, leaving, for the most part, human traditions and the Babylonian Mystery religion of Rome behind.

The more biblical a Christian gets the more peaceable he gets: Yahweh does not tell a Christian to go out and slay his neighbor or convert him by the sword.

In light of this understanding, for a Muslim to reform, he must become conformed to the demands of the damned Koran.

This "reform" of Islam crap started with lapsed Roman Catholics such as W. F. Buckley and his ilk. This was in Buckley's latter years.

Profitsbeard said...

Islam needs a Reformation.

That does not means it will achieve one.

But we must say it.

As an offering from a more honorable fellow being.

The same way a cop says: "Put down the gun!" before firing, himself.

We are civilized.

We must give them a warning, and chance to relent, before we strike.

Islam is the uncivilized side of the Clash.

If we do not say ISLAM NEEDS A REFORMATION we do not give our human brothers and sisters, trapped in this deathcult, a chance to drop the gun of Islam before it is too late for them.

It they fail to, at least we gave them fair warning.

Which they would not do.

It is a small moral point, and probably hopeless, but that is what decency demands.

Muslims are the first and worst victims of the pedophile "prophet".

I hope they would wake and escape their Mohammedan prison.

Not that they would perish in its collapse and conflagration.

Islam has killed anough already.

Zenster said...

Profitsbeard: But we must say it.

Indeed, just like the way that Muslims must first "invite" us infidels to Islam before waging jihad. I can only hope that any refusal upon their part sees much swifter results than they have been able to produce with us unbelievers thus far.

If there is such a thing as Human Rights, then any of us who pretend to recognize them have a moral duty (but not any obligation), to free Muslims from the chains of their Islamic bondage.

The need for this makes Communism's imperative to free Western wage slaves from the tyranny of Capitalism look like a low priority mission.

Profitsbeard said...

Zenster: Indeed, just like the way that Muslims must first "invite" us infidels to Islam before waging jihad.

Some invitations are more equal than others.

We invite them to free themselves.

They "invite" us to become enslaved.

Luckily, we hold the military advantage.

So far...

Anonymous said...

Luckily, we hold the military advantage.

More of a super-advantage. While they may wish to kill every last one of us, we actually can kill every last one of them. They too often forget that they depend on our good Christian virtue to not do so.

Anonymous said...

I agree that there are no moderate Moslems. But there are a whole lot of Moslems who inherited their Islam because of where they were born and give it no pernonal loyalty. Such people will happily become the non-practicing Catholics of Islam if the local legal restraints on them are lifted.

Zenster said...

Professor Hale: While they may wish to kill every last one of us, we actually can kill every last one of them.

It defies all reason − as if reason ever played any sort of major role in Islam − that Muslims continue their jihadist cavorting, all the while pretending that a veritable sword of Damocles is not suspended over their collective heads.

Short of a physical demonstration, which is coming soon enough, the West really needs to fire some sort of shot across Islam's reef-oriented bow. Towards that end, what follows is an excerpt from a much older post about Functional Deterrents to Islamic Terrorism:

Propaganda — A Cautionary Tale:

Islamic terrorists continue to agitate for the use of nuclear weapons against the far better armed West. Muslim populations need to be informed of how exceptionally dangerous such a notion is. Making them aware of this would involve creating a really well produced Middle East version of "The Day After Tomorrow". Not the more recent global warming movie but that 1980s American video about the aftermath of a nuclear war.

The program should show retaliation for a nuclear terrorist attack on a major American city. Explicit recreations should portray Cairo, Islamabad, Tehran, Riyadh and Damascus all vaporizing in nuclear explosions. Extremely vivid and graphic detail should be used to demonstrate just how devastating and gruesome such a response would be. Accurate recreations of firestorms, burning cement, boiling lakes and disintegrating buildings should all be included. The footage would also show easily recognized landmarks within each metropolis being destroyed along with its more affluent neighborhoods.

Subsequent footage should document the immense human suffering from radiation poisoning, exposure, starvation and epidemics that would sweep the affected areas. All of this should be burned onto millions of DVDs with sub-tracks in Arabic, Farsi, Pashto, Hindi and so forth. These would then be airdropped over the entire Arab Middle East and made to coincide with peak viewing cycles during Ramadan. To enhance public notice of this, airings of the video would also be electronically piggybacked onto al Jazeera, al Manar and other Arab state television broadcast channels. This would guarantee a splash of publicity and assure follow up viewing of the airdropped DVDs.

I can think of few other ways for America to clearly communicate the incredibly perilous position Muslims are being placed in by their jihadi co-religionists. Whether they agree with them or not is entirely of zero consequence. Islam is currently headed directly towards such an outcome and if there is some way of inspiring Muslims to begin reforming Islam or killing off their jihadist clergy and followers then this catastrophe might be averted.

----- End of Excerpt -----

Short of an actual demonstration, this scenario may represent one of the only convincing tools that Western cuontries have in terms of persuading Muslims that their dreams of a global caliphate are nothing but total suicide.

As an afterthought, it might be useful to include some sort of similar coda that shows a triumphant Islam descending into sectarian-fueled nuclear chaos. It would serve as an alternative example of how Islam remains damned to complete obliteration should it prove incapable of genuinely abandoning jihad.

With Iran's headlong race to acquire nuclear weapons, Islam's clock is counting down with disturbing speed. It is unimaginable that any major Western power or, for that matter, Israel will absorb a terrorist nuclear strike without unleashing Total War upon one, if not many, Islamic countries.

Should that horror come to pass, Islam will gain a final understanding of just how puny and inadequate its own overblown visions of merciless savagery have become in this nuclear age.

Zenster said...

Professor Hale: Such people will happily become the non-practicing Catholics of Islam if the local legal restraints on them are lifted.

That is a huge "if" in that the individuals who have even a remote chance of lifting those "local legal restraints" are the exact ones who profit most from their existence in the first place.

This is why − be it though coercion or persuasion − Muslims must be made to police their own ranks and work from within to eliminate jihadism.

The odds of such a thing happening are exceedingly dimunitive and all of this points to a tragically unhappy ending for Islam's bloodsoaked tale.