The law of the land in the United States is the Constitution. In Great Britain it is the English Common Law, which is embedded in a larger unwritten body of legal doctrine known as the British Constitution.
Other Western countries have their own constitutions, and most of them are similar. They outline the rights of their citizens, which are generally similar to those found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
But what about Muslim countries? What is the law of the land in an Islamic state?
The obvious answer is “sharia”: the body of jurisprudence laid down in the first three centuries after the death of Mohammed. Sharia is based on the Koran and the sunna (the authenticated sayings of Mohammed, as recorded in the hadith, plus the deeds of the Mohammed, as described by authenticated witnesses), and was later elaborated into precise legal codes.
This answer may seem obvious to you and me, but it isn’t obvious to everybody else. A couple of weeks ago I posted an email by a progressive Israeli named Adam Keller, who objected to the “racist” views of Geert Wilders and said that the Dutch politician was not welcome in Israel.
Most readers have long since tired of the comment thread on that post — which now has more than 140 comments, and is still going — so the exchange that went on there tonight is probably going unread by all but a few.
Mr. Keller returned to the fray to offer this, concerning Islamic countries:
There is very often some vague and ambiguous reference to Sharia - which does NOT mean that Sharia is the law.
I’d been staying out of the argument there, but I had to jump in on this one, because his statement is simply incorrect. The idea that most Muslim countries do not really observe Islamic law is a fairly common misapprehension, so it’s important to set the record straight. Here’s my reply to Mr. Keller:
Actually, you are mistaken here. The facts don’t support your statement; they refute it.
You have evidently failed to research your case before making this assertion.
I’ll give you some major examples of the “law of the land” from various Muslim countries:
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Article 3 [Islam] Section 2 of the Syrian Constitution
Islamic jurisprudence is a main source of legislation.
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Chapter 1 Articles 2 and 106 of the Jordanian Constitution:
Islam is the religion of the State and Arabic is its official language.
The Shari’a Courts shall in the exercise of their jurisdiction apply the provisions of the Shari’a law.
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Chapter 1, Article 7 of the Saudi Constitution
Government in Saudi Arabia derives power from the Holy Koran and the Prophet’s tradition.
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Part 1, Article 2 of the Egyptian Constitution
Islamic jurisprudence is the principal source of legislation.
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From the Constitution of Iraq (written by the United States):
Section One, Article 2:
First: Islam is the official religion of the State and it is a basic source of legislation:
(a) No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam.
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From the Constitution of Afghanistan (written by the United States):
Article 2 [Religions]:
(1) The religion of the state of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is the sacred religion of Islam.
Article 3 [Law and Religion]:
In Afghanistan, no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam.
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What is “vague and ambiguous” about the above examples?
As you can see, sharia is codified as the law of the land in these countries. And, in case you think that “Islamic jurisprudence” or “the undisputed rules of Islam” do not refer to sharia, think again: Islam does not recognize any “jurisprudence” or “undisputed rules” besides sharia; those are in fact the precise definition of sharia.
I don’t have the constitutions of other Islamic countries to hand — and does Yemen even have a constitution? — but I have no reason to suspect they are much different from the examples given above, with the obvious exception of Turkey.
What kind of law do you think is the law of the land in Iran?
You’re out on a limb here. Do you want to saw it off, or shall I?
If the enforcement of sharia is less than perfect in Muslim countries — and places such as Egypt and Syria are notoriously corrupt in their jurisprudence — it is because prosecutors and judges fail to observe their own laws.
This is why the Muslim Brotherhood has gained such a foothold in these countries. The members of Al Ikhwan al-Muslimeen are reformers: they want to return their nations to the letter of the law — Islamic law.
The Brotherhood considers the current regimes in the Middle East to be illegitimate despots and tyrants, usurpers who have driven their countries away from the path of true Islam and into error and blasphemy. They demand a return to the Caliphate, in which Muslims will be governed justly according to the word of Allah.
They insist that their rulers obey the law of the land — sharia.
78 comments:
Qur'an:9:5
"Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war."
The only vague point of Sharia Law is WHO is defined as a believer - versus a disbeliever. The "beauty" of this vagueness is that, even when the whole world is theoretically converted to Islam, Muslims will still be murdering and enslaving each other until one faction finally violently overcomes the others - or blows everyone up in a final "poetic" act of belief in Allah. As everyone in the know already knows, nuclear Iran is the prime candidate for the end-of-the-world scenario.
Thus, Sharia Law gives doctrinal support for Muslim Iranians, Saudi Arabians, Turks, etc. to wage infinite Islamic war because each separate group defines the others as non-believers and cites the Koran to justify violent jihad against fellow Muslims who are deemed to be disbelievers of true Islam.
Sharia law is implemented by fear. Fear that some unseen jihadi will come from out of nowhere and kill anyone who does not conform. Just look at Theo Van Gogh.
The higher the percentage of Muslims in a society - the higher the number of unseen killers who independently enforce Sharia law.
Read my full theory on Islamic fear at http://islamsfatalflaw.blogspot.com.
The members of Al Ikhwan al-Muslimeen are reformers: they want to return their nations to the letter of the law — Islamic law.
Dear Baron, thank you so much for lending your superior firepower in the "Is Opposition to Islam a Sign of Racism?" thread.
In light of how much effort has gone into deconstructing Adam Keller's totally benighted perceptions (or lack thereof), you are more than entitled to have spun his dross-laden straw into a bit more gold for your valued readers.
Dear Adam "I didn't say that" Keller,
So Geert Wilders has [quote] "blundered in to interfere in the politics of my country", you say?
Few sentences further down the drain, you immediately commit the very same sin of blundering, you accuse GW of:
[quote] "More relevant for this discussion in this blog, I strongly object to Wilders' activities in Holland".
I mean, I wouldn't mind taking you serious for the sake of argument, but you're not exactly helping here, are you?
There is probably no way to describe the choking feeling that the dense emptiness of your rethoric causes me. Might be akin to getting caught by and buried underneath an avelange. Luckily I saw this one coming and chose to step aside. I think that, as a learning experience - you, the archetypal pangaeic humanist, engaged in a honourable fight with that substantial part of humanity that still "doesn't get it" - this socalled exchange has been a mere exercise in futility.
In quite an unexpected way though, this thread has been very useful for me as a showcase of that typical progressivist mindset at work. I was a bit rash in my judgement, condemning as "propaganda tsunami" the quasi argumentative waves you caused, that had so many strawmen, begged bottled questions, red herrings, empty words and just plain old lies, washed up on these shores here at GoV.
Now I realize that my critique was unwarranted. After having read most of this thread, I no longer think you're just a mere agitpropper for some kind of global socialism. You really are a true believer, and a fanatic at that.
I applaud the ones who - unlike me - had the stamina to politely deconstruct your beliefsystem and who kindly responded as if you actually would value intelligent discussion, LAW Wells, Hesperado, Zenster, goethechosemercy, Anne Kit, Dymphna and of course the Baron himself.
You probably will keep spreading dangerous and hateful libels against chosen MP's who put their lives at stake, just for speaking out against Islamic supremacist doctrine. And I guess you will persist in playing the guilt by association game, by putting most if not all counterjihadists squarely in the camp of those neo-"conservative" (that is big gov, neo-Progressive/Wilsonian, Islam = peace elitist) foes you love to hate so dearly.
In spite of all that, you and your wife are still welcome in Amsterdam, as Geert Wilders should have been welcomed by your uncivil and misguided friends holding up plates before their heads in Tel Aviv.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
(posted without preview which seems defunct on Firefox)
Sagunto,
Quite right. And one of your remarks reminded me -- we should copy that entire comments thread and keep it in our files as a gigantic and indigestibly multifarious example of typical Newspeak used by Leftists like Keller.
What is scary about the Kellers of the world is that they believe 100% that they are on the side of the angels. "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions" was coined precisely with people like Keller in mind.
Which means he is hopeless. No amount of rational dialogue and discussion with him will ever change his starry eyes.
I distinguish PC MC from Leftism, in that the former is milder and less fanatical than the letter. Keller is definitely the latter.
Hesperado,
"What is scary about the Kellers of the world is that they believe 100% that they are on the side of the angels. "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions" was coined precisely with people like Keller in mind."
Scary stuff indeed. It prompted me to reread that chapter from Chesterton's "Orthodoxy" he wrote more than hundred years ago, called "The Suicide of Thought".. I really needed some form of solace after wading through the muddy pool of Keller's leftist philanthropy, and I read (about "good intentions"):
"I could not express myself more exactly than by saying that he [G.B. Shaw, the socialist] has a heroically large and generous heart; but not a heart in the right place."
[..]
"And this is so of the typical society of our time.
The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful..."
[G. K. Chesterton, 1908]
Untruthful indeed, to say the least..
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Sagunto,
Great quote from Chesterton. I only have one subtle misgiving, which may well be quelled on further reading of Chesterton: while he's searingly correct about the "old Christian virtues gone mad" when transformed into, let us say, PC MC, I wonder if he also perceives the co-existence, among the "mad" virtues so transformed, beneficent ones -- thereby making our modern predicament less starkly black and white.
Hesperado,
I'm usually not one for simply throwing quotes around, but here's one that might be illuminating if not heartening as well. This one is from Hilaire Belloc a friend so close to Chesterton that their common foe, the beforementioned G.B. Shaw spoke of the "Chesterbelloc". As a sidenote, this writer was mentioned by F. A. Hayek as the inspiration for his "Road to Serfdom", for already in 1913 he wrote "The Servile State", warning for the emergence of a hybrid form of socialism. Highly recommended reading. Hayek said:
"Even much more recent warnings [about Socialism] which have proved dreadfully true have been almost entirely forgotten. It is not yet thirty years since Hilaire Belloc, in a book which explains more of what has happened since in Germany than most works written after the event, explained that `the effects of Socialist doctrine on Capitalist society is to produce a third thing different from either of its two begetters - to wit, the Servile State."
Anyway, the quote by Belloc is from 1938:
"… In view of this, anyone with a knowledge of history is bound to ask himself whether we shall not see in the future a revival of Mohammedan political power [..] the recrudescence of Islam, the possibility of that terror under which we lived for centuries reappearing, and of our civilization again fighting for its life against what was its chief enemy for a thousand years, seems fantastic. Who in the Mohammedan world today can manufacture and maintain the complicated instruments of modern war? Where is the political machinery whereby the religion of Islam can play an equal part in the modern world?
[..]
I say the suggestion that Islam may re-arise sounds fantastic but this is only because men are always powerfully affected by the immediate past: one might say that they are blinded by it."
So Belloc was prescient about both fascism/nazism and Islam. He and his friend Chesterton were not the type to be lured by PC MC..
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Per Belloc: Who in the Mohammedan world today can manufacture and maintain the complicated instruments of modern war?
Only those we are stupid enough not to bomb out of existence at the first hint of such activity. Iran springs to mind as a foremost modern example. Elsewise, 20/20 hindsight points towards Pakistan.
PS: Again with the excellent quotation, Sagunto.
Zenster,
Did you notice the reaction of Mr. Adam "didn't say that" Keller to the quote from Chesterton?
In his muddled mind both Shaw and Chesterton offer him guidance, though in real life they were actually firmly opposed to one another.
Chesterton detested and fiercely attacked Shaw's typically progressive socialist idea of "the superman" (Übermensch). There was a time before WW-2 when eugenics and the idea of actively working towards a better "stock" of men, was widely accepted as "the modern way" in socialist circles. They even went as far that, as is described by prof. Watson in his "Lost Literature of Socialism":
"..in the European century that began in the 1840s, from Engels' article of 1849 down to the death of Hitler, everyone who advocated genocide called himself a socialist, and no exception has been found."
Strange bedfellows for Mr. Keller, or are they?
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Sagunto: In his muddled mind both Shaw and Chesterton offer him guidance, though in real life they were actually firmly opposed to one another.
I'm confident that, amid his intense cognitive dissonance, he feels they somehow cancel each other out in the same way drinking a diet soda neutralizes the calories of having just eaten a candy bar.
You have certainly convinced me to push Chesterson towards the top of my reading list. Keep up the good work.
Following is the first comment on this thread by Mr. Adam "didn't say that" Keller.
It is really flattering to see that I've already inspired two (2) threads on this respectable blog, all by myself, and all starting with just inserting a single remark under the photo of a protest demonstration held on the occasion of the visit of a certain parliamentary gentleman from Holland to my hometown and organized by my wife and her Dutch-Israeli friends. It is like that in life, you take a seemingly trivial action and you don't know what you started.
It is even more flattering to see that though the good Baron who maintains this blog for the edification and benefit of all proper counter-jihadists had designated a very specific, weighty and significant subject – i.e., what is the Law of the Land in Arab and Muslim countries, and is it or is it not the Law of Sharia – the discussion in practice strayed from that subject almost at once and came to center on my own humble person. Specifically, on which of the luminaries of British intellectual life in the first half of the Twentieth Century may have given me some inspiration.
As a general rule I would like to remark that one might feel inspired also by a writer and thinker to whose views one takes great exception, if said writer and thinker was of a significant talent and stature. It might even happen that one would feel inspired by two writers and thinkers who were very antagonistic to each other, when both of them were of a significant talent and stature – and even that would not oblige one to endorse every word uttered by either one.
Concretely, as a matter of fact, I cannot really claim to be inspired by G. K. Chesterton, or even to be very familiar with his writings in general. I am in the main familiar with him as a writer of detective stories and the creator of the incomparable
Father Brown.
If any you would have the occasion of spending three months in an Israeli military prison – as I had, back in 1988, after writing subversive graffiti on no less than 117 tanks of the Israeli Armored Corps while being on military reserve duty and charged with the specific duty of guarding same tanks during late night hours - I would strongly recommend taking with you several volumes of Chesterton's Father Brown stories.
The military prisons maintained by the Israeli Defense Forces (about those of other armies I have no first-hand knowledge) are rather unpleasant institutions, which combine the most unpleasant features of an ordinary prison with those of a military Boot Camp, and where you are in charge of people who are in effect both prison guards and training sergeants. Father Brown was certainly a far more pleasant company to have during these three months. (One may, of course, greatly enjoy the stories also in the privacy and comfort of one's own home.)
Of G. K. Chesterton's non-detective writings I have, I regret to say, only slight knowledge. In the earlier thread, Sagunto had come up with a quotation of him of which I was not previously familiar, in which Chesterton said that G.B. Shaw – a lifelong opponent – "has a heroically large and generous heart; but not a heart in the right place".
I was touched by these words, which I feel also indicate the generosity of Chesterton's own heart. I was deeply touched by Sagunto suggesting that the same words may also apply to myself (especially as other participants were a bit less generous in their remarks about my person).
While on the subject of generosity to an opponent I would like to quote a far older work – the Chanson de Roland, a classical work of counter-jihad – in the excellent translation of Dorothy Sayers, also a luminary of British intellectual life in early 20th Century and also a writer of excellent detective stories. It indicates the regard which Medieval knights, engaged in the Crusade (as counter-jihad was called in those days) were ready to accord their Muslim opponents:
From Balaguet cometh an Emir,
His form in noble, his eyes are bold and clear,
When on his horse he's mounted in career
He bears him bravely armed in battle-gear,
And for his courage he's famous far and near;
Were he but Christian, right knightly he'd appear.
With this I must leave for you for the moment. I promise to return anon, after dealing with some things which require my urgent attention here in Tel Aviv - and to give some remarks about the stated subject of this thread, i.e. the Law of the Land.
Dear all, here is another jolly message from Mr. Adam "didn't say that" Keller . I was intending to spend this afternoon and evening doing very thoroughly my homework so as to write something cogent on the subject of the Law of the Land.
But something suddenly come up, as it can in the life of an activist in this very crazy country, forcing me to spend the time instead in preparing a demonstration. Here is the call for action which I had been busy spreading as widely as possible over the entire afternoon and early evening
=============================================================
Extreme right wing activists are organizing a demonstration the city of Bat Yam, just south of Tel-Aviv. They are targeting the area's Arab residents, claiming that they "defile" Jewish girls. Such accusations are reminicient of dark periods in History. They are voiced at a time of a great decline in Israeli human rights and a rise in hate-driven activities.
Instead of focusing on those who hate. We shall focus on love: love of human beings, love of one's neighbor, love of Arabs. We invite all of you to create signs expressing support and love for those who are being attack, and join us outside the Ban Yam mall at 19:00. Let's do it together!
If you are interested you can follow the link here, me and my wife appear on the second photo, the one of the anti-racist demo
http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-4002085,00.html
Now, I was idly wondering where you counter-jihadists would have stood, had you happened to be in Bat Yam this evening. Obviously, not where I and my friends stood. There were with us quite a few Muslims (!) from Jaffa, chanting "Jews and Arabs Refuse to be Enemies, which would in advance have precluded your coming anywhere near (perish the thought!).
The people on the other side really HATE Muslims, which certainly should recommend them to you. They also shouted insults at the Prophet Muhammad, of which you might have also heartily approved.
On the other hand, being really very very staunch Jewish supremacists, these people also really HATE Christians, too. In fact, they habitually engage in the nice pastime of going through the alleys of Jerusalem's Old City, assaulting any Christian clergyman or monk which they encounter, spitting on them and sometimes physically beating them up. Some of you are, I understand, either Christians or have some regard for Christianity, so you might have found it difficult to stand with that bunch, either.
Anyway, I don’t think any of you were likely to take a plane and come here just in order to demonstrate at the rundown suburbs of Tel Aviv, so all the above is just a theoretical exercise, a "thought experiment", to borrow Einstein's term.
That's all for now, see you tomorrow about that Law of the Land!
Adam Keller: There were with us quite a few Muslims (!) from Jaffa, chanting "Jews and Arabs Refuse to be Enemies, which would in advance have precluded your coming anywhere near (perish the thought!).
Your snide tone is as unwelcome as it is inappropriate. There are many at Gates of Vienna who would likely be interested in meeting such people. An in-depth knowledge about such Muslim practices as kitman and taqiyya might make for slow progress but that does not mean none would be made.
They also shouted insults at the Prophet Muhammad, of which you might have also heartily approved.
There is much about Muhammad that is worthy of insult. Do you not agree or do you find him, as Muslims do, to be beyond reproach?
Feel free to answer that simple question.
In the mean time, speaking only for myself of course, please try and overcome your obvious temptation to engage in puerile antics or inflammatory, sensationalizing rhetoric. All it will buy you is being put on "ignore" by many of the more intelligent people here at Gates of Vienna.
Quote:
They also shouted insults at the Prophet Muhammad, of which you might have also heartily approved.
There is much about Muhammad that is worthy of insult. Do you not agree or do you find him, as Muslims do, to be beyond reproach?
end quote.
This is an important question I'd like Mr. Keller to ask himself:
Have you internalized the Muslim view of Islam, of Christianity, of Judaism?
Do you believe yourself to be a Person of the Book?
Or do you define yourself differently?
Do you believe that Christians and Jews should "feel themselves to be subdued?" That is certainly not a democratic perspective, but if you have internalized Muslim perceptions, then this is what you think.
This is what you would enable.
How much of Islam have you claimed-- how much of Islam do you and your Muslim friends agree is holy?
As a self-honest Christian, I can only think that
1. Christians are people of the Word, not people of the book.
2. Islam is a profane religion. That doesn't mean it might not be true, it means that there is nothing of God in it.
3. Mohammed is a false prophet.
I have worked hard not to internalize non-Western views of the West, myself, my culture and my beliefs.
Where is your own cultural integrity?
I know this seems to be off topic, but Keller's answer will be a part of his perspective on Sharia law.
I am not a religious believer, and I feel that there are many figures which are held holy by various religions who deserve to be very sharply criticized, the founder of Islam among them.
In my view, all prophets without exception are false prophets, since I do not believe in a God who can inspire somebody to prophesy or predict the future,
I very strongly disapprove of the shouting of insults against something which is important to the members of a discriminated ethnic or religious group in order to express hatred against that group, as was the case in Bat Yam today and in many other places in the world.
There are numerous aspects of the Jewish religion which I strongly disapprove of, and still I would not like to hear an anti-semite attacking the same as a means of expressing his hatred of Jews.
My basic view is based on the fact that in Israel Jews are the dominant ethnic group which rules over in various ways oppresses and discriminates against the Arab Palestinians, be they Muslims or Christians. As such, I am duty bound to work with them in the struggle to create a society where everybody is equal. I am a Western person, shaped by Western ideas, and I can never be anything else even had I wanted. Democracy and equal rights are the proud heritage of the West which I am trying my best to uphold, in such actions as today's demonstration.
Adam Keller: I very strongly disapprove of the shouting of insults against something which is important to the members of a discriminated ethnic or religious group in order to express hatred against that group…
Even if that group's most central document is routinely interpreted as an explicit command for them to regard you as a descendant of apes and pigs?
Even if your refusal to dispute or return that insult in kind only causes you to be held in even less esteem along with being veiewed as even more weak and more worthy of being despised?
Even if your calm acceptance of such insult confirms your religiously sanctioned suitability to be physically attacked, robbed, enslaved and − in the case of women − raped?
Do tell.
I can only repeat that I uphold the Western values of democracy and tolerance, even if you do not. and that the specific Muslims who were with me today in Bat Yam (and on may earlier occasions) also uphold the same values - even if they are not Westerners themselves by birth.
The main slogan of the demonstration was "Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies" and the people who chanted that slogan meant it in all seriousness.
We indeed do not regard each other as enemies but as partners in building together a society where people will be equal.
You persist in claiming that "all Muslims are the same" and they are all Jihadists, and I persist in strongly denying it, and I don''t see a special reason to assume that we would ever convince each other, however long we continue the discussion.
As I said already several times. your view on "what Islam is" and "what Islam is not" is precisely identical to Bin Laden's view on the same subject - differing only as to the (not unimportant, to be sure) point if this is Good or Bad. There are people - and quite a lot of people, too, both Muslim and non-Muslim - who beg to differ.
You wrote:
"In the mean time, speaking only for myself of course, please try and overcome your obvious temptation to engage in puerile antics or inflammatory, sensationalizing rhetoric. All it will buy you is being put on "ignore" by many of the more intelligent people here at Gates of Vienna."
It is not me who persisted in continuing the debate and pushing the previous thread to Gargantuan size, If all of you decide to ignore me and my REVOLTING views, there are quite a lot of things for me to do in my normal Israeli struggle which by any objective criteria are far more deserving of my time and energy, It is entirely up to you and the other counter-jihadists to decide how long you want my disturbing presence here in your stronglhold.
Adam Keller: … the specific Muslims who were with me today in Bat Yam (and on may earlier occasions) also uphold the same values - even if they are not Westerners themselves by birth.
If those Muslims "uphold the Western values of democracy and tolerance", then they are MINO (Muslims In Name Only). Qur'anic doctrine deems democracy to be haram (forbidden) as it deals with man-made laws that can NEVER be recognized as being equivalent to the divine shari'a law as handed down by Allah.
You are wallowing in your usual equivalency and demonstrating a dangerous ignorance of Islam.
You persist in claiming that "all Muslims are the same" and they are all Jihadists …
Please provide a cite and working URL link to anywhere that I have written such a thing. Otherwise, you may retract your unbased and falsely made claim. As usual, you put forth facts not in evidence, a disturbing and exceptionally offensive habit of yours.
All Muslims are not the same. What IS the same is the Qur'an that ALL of them must follow under penalty of death.
That Qur'an demands that all Muslims strictly comply with shari'a law and that compliance explicitly forbids what you have erroneously attributed to your Muslim friends. Namely, that they "uphold the Western values of democracy and tolerance".
It is impossible for a Muslim to follow the Qur'an and simultaneously "uphold the Western values of democracy and tolerance". There is no way around this and if you persist in arguing otherwise you will reveal yourself as incompetent to engage in any further discussion of use.
As I said already several times. your view on "what Islam is" and "what Islam is not" is precisely identical to Bin Laden's view on the same subject - differing only as to the (not unimportant, to be sure) point if this is Good or Bad.
Again, you assume facts not in evidence. Please provide a cite and URL link. If you cannot do so, please post a second retraction for this false and unbased claim.
To compare me with a barbaric cretin like Osama bin Laden is discourteous, to say the least, and any further comments of yours that contain such twaddle will be reported as abuse.
I need not apologise or retract anything, since I have very clear and unequivocal quotations where you repeat Bin Laden's opinions on the nature of Islam word by word.
For example:
Qur'anic doctrine deems democracy to be haram (forbidden) as it deals with man-made laws that can NEVER be recognized as being equivalent to the divine shari'a law as handed down by Allah.
and
All Muslims are not the same. What IS the same is the Qur'an that ALL of them must follow under penalty of death.
That Qur'an demands that all Muslims strictly comply with shari'a law and that compliance explicitly forbids them to uphold the Western values of democracy and tolerance.
It is impossible for a Muslim to follow the Qur'an and simultaneously "uphold the Western values of democracy and tolerance".
All of the above are that cretin Bin Laden's opinions on the nature of Islam, which are faithfully shared by you. On the other hand my friends' opinion of Islam is that you can be a good Muslim also when you drink alcoholic drinks and eat on Ramadan (and drink alcoholic drinks on Ramadan, too – they once invited me and other Jewish friends to drink excellent single malt whisky on Ramadan) and also to be a good Muslim and a staunch upholder of democracy, too. (But then, I am the kind of Jew who eats heartily on Yom Kippur and – but for my being a vegetarian – would have eaten a ham steak, too.
In your opinion they are MINO (Muslims In Name Only) – yet another opinion which you share with that cretin Bin Laden.
Dear Mr. Adam "no religious believer" Keller,
I really thought we had ended the other thread on a somewhat more friendly note, but now I see that you have resorted to comparing a distinguished GoV commenter with a cretin? Isn't that a bit rich for someone of your modest stature?
But seriously, let's not belittle one another and let me try to raise your guilt by association trick to a level where it actually becomes a bit of an argument to prove a point, because in all honesty, I almost felt inclined to agree with you, in part, a very small part, though I think the cretin-thing was still a bit low.
The Osama herring could actually prove a chilling point that is made by people like Robert Spencer of JihadWatch, and that is the fact that - apart from divisions over methods - the Brotherhood-type Muslims have their totalitarian worldview backed up by the doctrinary scriptures of Islam and, concerning the point of mandatory war against unbelievers, all the regular schools of Islamic jurisprudence.
The MINO type Muslims (good description!) can be pleasant company to hang around with at demo's for a new world order and so on, I know that. However, Islam has a developed doctrine, theology and law that is unique in that it mandates violence against unbelievers. So your peaceful Muslim friends have a very slim justification for their own peacefulness within the Islamic sources themselves. And they are only at peace with non-muslims insofar as they are either ignorant of what Islam teaches about how Muslims should behave towards unbelievers, or they have consciously rejected those violent elements of Islam.
I wonder what they would answer if you ask them if they honestly believe that their prophet is the "al insan al kamil", the perfect rolemodel to follow. Now there's an exercise in cognitive dissonance ;-)
I must confess to @Hesperado that I didn't follow his advice, i.e. I've read most of your comments. And as I've said earlier, the profile that emerges is one of a true believer. That's why I don't really buy it when you say that "I am not a religious believer", because I think you are.
You have stated your beliefs very clearly and stand by them, religiously (in the actual sense of "religio", from ligare, i.e. "binding together, unite in harmony").
In a way I think you're actually a good man and I don't think that your presence at GoV need not necessarily be disturbing.
I wouldn't go as far as to say that you're "far too good", because I don't posess the magnanimity of a giant like Chesterton, but perhaps he would repeat to you what he said about G.B. Shaw, "a generous heart, but not in the right place".
to be continued..
continued..
So to round up my argument: I do think that you're a religious believer, one that ascribes to that political religion that has lead so many educated people in the past on the road towards serfdom. If you could find it in your heart to briefly step out of your beliefsystem and take a fresh look at the direction Islam is moving towards worldwide, I think we could have a honest discussion over here, without all the sophisms and debating tactics that, to be honest, have not earned you that many sympathy points among commenters and readers, but of course that's not what you're after and that's fine.
It is all well and nice to demonstrate for yourself that one can drink a fine blend of whiskey with your Muslim friends, and to be "bound in harmony" while denying that it is the extremists who are shaping today's Islam. Because it is actually you and your friends who are the ones shaping history, aren't you? But I'm affraid that it is not just Osama as you would like to have us believe. It would take too much counter-intuitive effort for me to buy into your rosy-red fiction, because I am not as religious a believer as you have demonstrated to be.
And of course you may not believe in a transcendent afterlife or heaven, but I tell you that when things have run their course and Islamic supremacism has been allowed to spread at today's pace, one day you and your wining and dining Muslim friends might start to believe in hell.
As always,
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Thanks for this more positive attitude and I will try to reciprocate it. By the way, calling Bin Laden "A cretin" was not my invention but Zenster's. Actually, I think Bin Laden is no cretin, which is a pity – then he would have been less dangerous.
If you extend the term "believer" to anyone who has clear and strong moral and political principles and is willing to act on them, whether or not there is any "Father in Heaven" involved in these principles – yes, then the term would apply to me. I try to be rational about my principles and about their application to actual situations, to remember always that the I have gotten these principles from other human beings who were or are far from perfect and could and did and do make mistakes, and that the same of course applies to myself. I think that those who feel that they are following the word of a perfect God are wrong, they are just following the word of one or several human beings in the past who were as capable of mistake and anyone else, and that mistakes codified in holy writings are more difficult to correct – but not impossible. I want to get to that in detail as specifically concerns Islam, which would have to wait some hours as I have some urgent things to do here. When I get to it I will try my best to say what I want to say in as non-confrontational a way as I can make it.
Adam Keller: I need not apologise or retract anything…
You have posted the following:
Adam Keller: You persist in claiming that "all Muslims are the same"…
By placing the words "all Muslims are the same" in quotation marks, you have not just attributed such opinions to myself but have cited them as a verbatim quote of my previous writings WHEN NO SUCH THING EXISTS. I have politely requested that you provide a cite and link (as I just have done for your own statement), and you have disrespectfully declined.
If you feel no need to apologize for maintaining every appearance of being a FRAUD and a LIAR, then feel free to carry on. Otherwise it is important for you to restore some vestige of credibility to yourself by retracting such an obvious fabrication.
What's more, in the exact same sentence you go on to accuse me of "claiming" that Muslims "are all Jihadists". This is another blatant falsehood which requires a separate retraction in and of itself.
Making a false attribution or claim and then triumphantly knocking it down is known as a "straw man argument" and is widely recognized as one of the hallmarks of an incompetent and deficient intellect.
Finally, you continually ascribe to me as my "opinion" or opinions what is, in reality, the openly avowed and publicly declared statements of Islam's most highly respected scholars and political leaders.
These are easily verified and, taken together with the historical record, constitute a body of FACT that cannot be disputed save by the sort of dissembling and misinformation you scatter about wherever you go.
FACT: Muslims routinely kill blasphemers and apostates.
FACT: Misinterpretation of the Qur'an is punishable by DEATH.
FACT: The Qur'an is an immutable document whose content cannot be changed on penalty of a DEATH sentence (fatwa).
FACT: Muhammad is regarded as Insaan-e-Kaamil or "The Perfect Man" who’s every action, word and deed are deemed to be beyond reproach and any insult to whom is punishable by DEATH.
In an attempt to shrug off the reality of Islam, you continue to ascribe these known facts as merely being my opinions. They are NOT my opinions and the only reason I mention these FACTS is in order to establish the true nature of Islam as it has repeatedly demonstrated throughout nearly the entirety of its existence.
Finally, while Osama bin Laden has no problem with every kufr on earth being killed or subdued, much less the countless millions of Muslims who would die in that process; I, on the other hand, I have a tremendous problem with how swine like bin Laden are so contentedly precipitating the Muslim holocaust.
Osama bin Laden has no such qualms and, therefore, your febrile attempts to compare myself to him are as odious and they are FALSE.
Adam Keller: I very strongly disapprove of the shouting of insults against something which is important to the members of a discriminated ethnic or religious group in order to express hatred against that group…
Keller would disapprove of shouting insults against Nazis or KKK? Wow, he may become an "ultra right wing Islamophobe" yet...!
The Hesperado
I have an objection to insulting members of a discriminated ethnic or religious group. I do not consider Nazis or KKK to be such.
I have promised to make an effort not to use any snide word and to express my view in as matter of fact a way as I can make it. Even so, I cannot guarantee that you will not find my views highly offensive, even revolting, whatever wording I use to express them.
Your basic view of Islam is very neat and logical. There is a religion, it has a book which is regarded as the literal Word of God. The book sternly commands believers to do A, B and C. Doing A, B and C means that each and every Muslim is duty bound to wage total war until they conquer whole world, subjugate or kill everybody else. Therefore, we Westerners have no choice but to fight a total war against them in self-defense, and convince our fellow Westerners of the impending "Muslim Holocaust".
Very neat and logical, but – I argue - still having very little relation to the real world. In the real world most people are not always consistent, not always principled (being principled is usually the exception rather than the rule), don't always keep the commandments and prohibitions set out in the holy books of their religion (or in the equivalent prevailing documents of non-religious ideologies). People are often lazy or hypocritical or ignorant or inclined to decent behavior even when they have a nasty religion or inclined to a nasty behavior when they have a relatively nice religion.
The Explicit Word of God is never clear and explicit, even if couched in such terms as "Thou Shalt ….. and failing that Thou Shalt be Put to Death Forthwith". Yes, certainly some people who are part of this religion may well take it literally and feel that they are duty bound to carry out the prescribed killing with their own hands - which could create extremely unpleasant situations. But certainly not everybody who is part of this religion is automatically so bound.
There are a hundred ways to get away from The Explicit Word of God: to say that this is a metaphor not to be taken literally, to say that it actually refers to the sinful part inside your own soul with which you must do combat by doing charity and good deeds, to say that God Himself in His Own good time will punish the sinners as they deserve and it is not for mere humans to take it into their own hands… Sophisticated people who are versed in theology need a lot of sophistry and casuistry and exegesis in order to turn The Explicit Word of God inside out and upside down – and they cheerfully do it all the time, whether they be Jewish, Christian, Buddhist – or Muslim. And ordinary, unsophisticated people can – and often do – just simply ignore the The Explicit Word of God when they find it inconvenient, shrug and say "Well, nobody's perfect".
All the above can be good or bad, depending what The Explicit Word of God is on the specific issue. I mentioned Buddhism a few lines above. Buddhism is a pacifist religion, isn't it? Opposed to the shedding of blood? Everybody knows that, this is the small bit which you know of Buddhism even if you know nothing else. So, can Buddhist states engage in war? Can they shed a great lot of blood? Sure they can. They did ever since there were Buddhist states, and they still do. Just ask the Tamils in Sri Lanka how pacifist is their Buddhist government, they could tell you a lot.
And Buddhist monks? Even if Buddhist lay people can err, and Buddhist rulers be as nasty as rulers of any other faith, surely Buddhist monks who dedicate their life to the service of the Lord Buddha would take seriously the explicit teachings of the Lord Buddha? And if so, then a Buddhist monk acting as a combat soldier would be an oxymoron - and all the more so an elite military unit composed exclusively of Buddhist monks? Yet historically the Kings of Korea maintained just such a unit, who were considered very good soldiers. Somebody with a religious authority gave them a dispensation which allowed them to shed blood and still be good faithful followers of the Lord Buddha.
In the case of The Explicit Word of the Lord Buddha the above characteristics of all religions, as they are lived and practiced in the real world, would seem regrettable. With regard to The Explicit Word of Allah, or at least some unsavory parts of it, the same mechanisms are much to be welcomed.
On what do I base my assertion that such mechanisms are at work also among Muslims, and that they serve to blunt many sharp edges among very many Muslims? On several decades of personal contact with Muslims of very many different kinds. There are, as I said, the kind of Muslims who are my political partners, some of them close personal friends and "soul mates", with whom I share basic values of democracy and equality. People who can laugh at the Prophet and his teachings while drinking whiskey on Ramadan and still feel offended when he is cursed by extreme right Jews. (By the way, I got the text of what they were chanting two days ago in Bat Yam: "Muhammad is dead/He was a construction worker/He had fleas in his moustache/He sold goat cheese in the market/Ha ha ha, what a bastard". All this rhymes in Hebrew, and it was clearly aimed as much at the archetypal and stereotypycal "Muhammad the Arab" as at the founder of the Islamic religion).
Then there are very many gradations of Muslims, some of them quite pious but not quite strict, and some more conservative, and all the way through the spectrum to people who take the Quran very seriously indeed. For example Muhammad Abu Tir who is a highly placed leader of the Hamas in East Jersualem with whom I and my friends had considerable dealings in the past five years, several visits to his private home when he was there (which was quite rare) as well as many brief meetings in courtrooms and behind prison bars (where he was most of the past five years). You can follow the links here if you are interested:
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/press_releases/1283701170/
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/press_releases/1279019622/
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/press_releases/1155234015/
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1149374737/
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/events/1283798620
http://adam-keller2.blogspot.com/2010/07/latest-news-from-only-democracy-in.html
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=16062
http://stallman.org/archives/gushshalom.html
Of course, with such people as Abu Tir I cannot feel in any way as close as with my whiskey-drinking Muslim friends in Tel Aviv. His basic outlook is very different from mine. Still, long conversations with him and several other Hamas leaders gave me and my friends a clear indication that a mutually-satisfactory modus vivendi can be achieved between Israel and the Palestinians – also Hamas Palestinians - which could ensure the long-term survival of my country, and which would be quite compatible with the interpretation of Islam by the Hamas people we met. .
I am an Israeli. I care about my country and want to ensure its future, and the only way this can possibly be done is to achieve peace with our neighbors while we can still do it from a position of strength.
Israel is located in the Middle East, surrounded by Arab countries which have majority Muslim populations. There could be some doubt as whether it was really the best solution to the problems of persecuted Jews in Europe to have us come to this country, just because our ancestors lived here 2000 years ago. But it was done and now we have to live with the consequences as best we can.
Israel itself has about 20% Arabs among its own citizens, most of them Muslims with some Christians and Druze (who can be considered either as a special kind of Muslim or as a separate religion – opinions differ). Israel also rules over several millions of Palestinians under occupation, who are disenfranchised and oppressed subjects – again, mostly Muslims with some Christians. If they are formally annexed and given civil rights, Israel would have about half Arab citizens, perhaps a bit less than 50% and perhaps just a bit more than 50%. There are many reasons to think that it would be preferable not to annex and keep these territories, but to let them become the independent State of Palestine.
As I already stated, the conflict is not basically religious. Whatever their religion, the people of any land where we would have come to establish a Jewish State were bound to oppose our having such designs on their country, and a conflict was certain to ensue. Of course, our neighbors and fellow-citizens being predominantly Muslim, this fact has considerable influence. But the very last thing which we need is to have the direct national conflict between us and the Palestinians, a national conflict between two peoples claiming the same land and needing to share it, subsumed and absorbed into a world-wide religious conflict.
Geert Wilders regards Israel as an outpost in the global conflict between the West and Islam. That is the very last role which I want to have for my country – still another reason why I greatly resented Wilders' presence here. We are here, in an Arab and Muslim region where we chose to live, among people which we chose as our neighbors. I repeat, it is not they who chose to be our neighbors, it is us who chose to be their neighbors and forced our presence on them by means of a very powerful army. In my view, having a very powerful army is far from enough to ensure our future – though I would not suggest disbanding it - and we must have peace with these neighbors which we chose for ourselves.
Dear Mr. Adam Keller,
Before I go into some of the remarks you've made since my last post, I'd appreciate if you first adress the issue with commenter @Zenster.
You have cited him as if he'd hold certain views about Muslims and I really think that you should back that up as he rightfully demands.
I was hoping for an honest discussion here, and you seemed to agree.
I trust you are sincere and therefore want to either prove or rectify your misquotes before continuing this discussion.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
How can we properly appreciate Adam Keller, until we've seen these charming pictures of him and his group hugging Yasser Arafat?
Let me try to put it in a different way, so as to remove the accusation of lying.
Zenster, you have stated here the following:
FACT: Muslims routinely kill blasphemers and apostates.
FACT: Misinterpretation of the Qur'an is punishable by DEATH.
FACT: The Qur'an is an immutable document whose content cannot be changed on penalty of a DEATH sentence (fatwa).
FACT: Muhammad is regarded as Insaan-e-Kaamil or "The Perfect Man" who’s every action, word and deed are deemed to be beyond reproach and any insult to whom is punishable by DEATH.
So far, your own words. And I absolutely agree that such well-known doctrines of Islam do exist.
Then, Zenster, you go on to say that these doctrines "establish the true nature of Islam as it has repeatedly demonstrated throughout nearly the entirety of its existence". So far, still your own words.
Your contention, as expressed in many postings, is that these – and other unsavory doctrines which are indeed there – are an obligatory and binding guide for practical action, which each and every Muslim must follow; and that, therefore, there cannot be such a thing as a moderate Muslim, or a Muslim committed to democracy, or a Muslim willing to live in peace with non-Muslims on terms of equality.
Is the above a fair summary of your position? If not, say where did I get you wrong, and I will correct it accordingly.
Now, my contention is that:
a)Also Bin Laden believes (of course) in the above doctrines of Islam;
b) Also Bin Laden believes that these doctrines establish the true nature of Islam as it has repeatedly demonstrated throughout nearly the entirety of its existence
c) Also Bin Laden believes that, therefore, there cannot be such a thing as a moderate Muslim, or a Muslim committed to democracy, or a Muslim willing to live in peace with non-Muslims on terms of equality.
d) Therefore, you, Zenster (and others in the West who broadly share your views) have the same basic view of the essential nature of Islam as does Bin Laden (and other Muslims who share his views), and that your only essential difference (quite important, of course) is about whether this is Good or Bad.
Did I now, somewhere in this chain of reasoning, make a false move and attribute to you something which is not your opinion? If I did, please point it out and I will take it back immediately. Or did I attribute to Bin Laden something which is not his opinion? Then, since he is not participating in this discussion, we can argue whether or not such is his opinion.
My own opinion – which I already stated at length, but will sum it up again, is that the above view of the essential nature of Islam is not true; that these and other unsavory doctrines represent one aspect of Islam but not the only one; that such doctrines are not in practice an obligatory and binding guide for practical action which each and every Muslim must follow, but only on the specific Muslims who want to follow them; that a great many Muslims who don't want to be obliged by such doctrines to actions which they don't want to take find a great many many ingenious and creative ways way to wriggle out of being in practice obliged to be guided by such doctrines; that it is in the supreme vital interest of Westerners in general (and Israelis like me in particular) to encourage Muslims who embark on such a wriggling out; and that it an extremely stupid and harmful thing to treat such Muslims with contempt and say that they are "not real Muslims" or "Muslims in name only".
Let me just make one more point: a similar identity of views between staunch foes existed also during the years of the Cold War. There, too, staunch Communists and staunch Anti-Communists shared the view that the regime in the Soviet Union and its satellites was the one and only "real-existing Socialism" and that there could not be such a thing as a Democratic Socialism, and were only divided on whether this was Good or Bad. In my view, this similarity is not accidental – the West/Muslim World confrontation is the replacement found by people in the West who sorely missed the Cold War and its exhilarating feeling of unity against a Satanic foe.
Dear latté island, you have not done your homework properly. You did find these
charming pictures of me and other members of my group (Gush Shalom, the Israeli Peace Bloc) hugging Yasser Arafat. But how did you fail to find the equally charming pictures of me and other members of my group hugging Sheikh Muhammad Abu Tir and other senior members of the Jerusalem branch of Hamas. Rather, as Sheikh Abu Tir is less given to hugging people than was the late Yasser Arafat, shaking hands with him and sipping tea with him and other Hamas leaders on the porch of his home in East Jerusalem, a very nice house where he is now forbidden to live by order of the Government of Israel.
It is a pity that you missed these, I think they are quite nice photos and I took care to both post them on our website and spread them as widely as I could to the media, in order to underline our position – that in order to get peace with the Palestinians Israel must talk to those which the Palestinians recognize as their leaders – which in the past meant Yasser Arafat who had a broad support among virtually all Palestinians, and which at present means both of the two competing leaderships, that of Fatah and that of Hamas, since both of them represent significant parts of the Palestinian People.
If you provide me with your own private email, dear latté island, I can promise to provide you with photos of our further meetings with Palestinian leader. If on such occasions you kindly help us in spreading such photos and making them more widely known, you will earn get out heart-felt thanks..
We're the same age, but you're so much younger than I am. You just aren't funny. When I saw the pix of Arafat, I didn't need to look any further.
I certainly can't force you to look further than you want. Entirely up to you to decide where to look and where not to look.
@Latte Island,
"How can we properly appreciate Adam Keller [..]"
Appreciate that this is the behaviour of someone who is a genuine believer, a hardline progressive utopist and one to take very seriously, if not as a person then most certainly as an example.
I have posted some comments on JihadWatch in response to an article about a leading progressive politician, Job Cohen, in the Netherlands, who displays the selfsame hardcore belief, resulting in the very same behaviour that Mr. Keller displays when consorting with Arafat. After numerous antisemitic "incidents", mayor Job Cohen of Amsterdam persuaded Jewish and Muslim organizations to work together in combatting antisemitism and islamophobia..
Thank you btw, for the information provided.
@Mr Keller,
Your exact words directed @Zenster were: << You persist in claiming that "all Muslims are the same" and they are all Jihadists >>
I really must insist that you reproduce the post by Zenster in which he uses the exact same words you cite verbatim.
If you can't deliver that post then - for the sake of honest discussion you seemed willing to start: apologize.
To underline my level of patience at this moment, I'll just permit myself a quote by the Greek goddess of triumph:
"Just do it!".
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
OK, I admit that the words "all Muslims are the same" and that "they are all Jihadists" are not something which I saw Zenster state in these words, but my attempt to sum up what his position amounts to. I still think that his position might be summed up in these words. Howevr, it is every person's absolute right to formulate positions for himself or herself, but since Zenster very adamantly does not accept that "all Muslims are the same" and "they are all Jihadists" reflect his position, I hereby apologize for attributing to him things which he did not say.
By the way, I am not at all sorry to see him dissociate himself from these two statements, which are manifestly wrong in my opinion. In fact, I am pleasantly surprised by his taking distance from them.
I still await Znester's response to my later posting, and to hear whether or not he accepts the formulation which I put there about what his position amounts to.
If he does not accept that formulation, I promise to immediately retract it and not attribute it to him in any way whatsoever, to look at his own position about the nature of Islam as formulated by himself and to compare it as objectively as I can with the opinion on the same subject held by Bin Laden.
latté island: How can we properly appreciate Adam Keller, until we've seen these charming pictures of him and his group hugging Yasser Arafat?
I wanted to type "unbelievable" but, unfortunately, for Adam Keller's ilk, such conduct is all too believable.
latté island, please permit me to congratulate you upon your investigative prowess in producing such damning evidence of just how dangerous this individual is.
As I have noted before, Adam Keller's path is most likely strewn with the train wrecks − which he always manages to miraculously skirt − of other peoples' lives. We are obliged to wonder if Yasser Arafat is one of those delightful Moderate Muslims™ that Adam Keller boasts of knowing. Who knows just how deeply this self-proclaimed humanitarian visionary has been sucked into the whirlpool of Islamic taqiyya. I, for one have no further interest in gauging just how far down the porcelain apparatus of terrorist complicity this individual has swirled.
I have seen enough and had enough of this clearly disturbed individual. Again, thank you, latté island, for producing such convincing evidence of just how deranged Adam Keller must surely be.
So, you found a neat and easy way to wriggle out of answering uncomfortable questions. Well, I had just a few hours ago written quite a bit in praise of Muslims finding creative ways of wriggling out, so I should not deny Western counter-jihadists the same privilege.
Just for the record: the years-long contact of myself and my group with Yasser Arafat and the PLO leadership, and our great and eventually successful efforts to get negotiations between the government of Israel and the PLO leadership started, are no dark secret which latté island needed to "uncover". It is something which we consider a great achivment which we at our own initiative published as wodely as we could. Not that all this makes much of a difference to you.
Adam Keller: So, you found a neat and easy way to wriggle out of answering uncomfortable questions.
I suppose I must take the word of an expert. You have already shown us and been shown for what you are, a dangerously deluded utopian willing to indulge in the very worst forms of equivalence and relativism. There are far more important things for me to do with my time than to waste any more of it on the likes of you.
A simple examination of how much pressure it took to make you admit to lying speaks volumes about your sort. Go and ruin someone else's life, mine is not up for grabs.
I have carefully pointed out, step by step, how much your thinking and views parallel those of Bin Laden - based solely on the things which you yourself undeniably did write and from which you can't dissociate yourself. You choose not to face this, but seize an opportunity to wriggle out. Suit yourself.
I will certainly not be heartbroken at no longer having to engage in debate who feels REVOLTED by my views. Good bye and good luck in your further adventures.
Sagunto wrote:
After numerous antisemitic "incidents", mayor Job Cohen of Amsterdam persuaded Jewish and Muslim organizations to work together in combatting antisemitism and islamophobia.
I must say, when I saw this it seems so obviously the right and proper attitude to take – to unite Jews and Muslims on the basis of opposing the racism targeting both of them – that I did not realize that for you the inclusion of islamophobia was a wrong and scandalous action on Job Cohen's part. I only realized it when I followed the link to Jihad Watch and so what you posted there.
I can only say the following of the respective positions of the two communities in Amsterdam and the Netherlands as a whole:
* Jews in Amsterdam suffer racist attacks in the street, which is shameful and totally unacceptable. However, in Dutch politics it is quite literally unthinkable that a party would emerge which is openly hostile to Jews and Judaism.
• * Muslims in Amsterdam also suffer racist attacks in the street, which is also shameful and totally unacceptable. In addition there is a party in Dutch politics which is, to say the least, unfriendly to Islam and Muslims, and which gained considerable political influence after the last elections.
Under these circumstances, I feel that it is very unreasonable to say that Job Cohen should have stuck to opposing anti-Semitism only and refrained from any mention of Islamophobia.
@Adam Keller,
"I must say, when I saw this it seems so obviously the right and proper attitude to take [..]"
Thank you for illustrating my point, which is why I posted the link to JW: to show that you and JINO Job Cohen share a common set of progressive beliefs as members of what we in Holland call "the Leftist Church", a vignette that the people you meet up with in Amsterdam will wear as a badge of honour, no doubt.
There's of course more to the story, because the fact is, that Jews are leaving Amsterdam, just as they are leaving Malmö, because of antisemitic harassment by Muslims. There are no reports of Muslims having to leave Amsterdam because of intimidation by Jews (or others) infected by "islamophobia".
A very tragic (and outrageous) twist to the story is that the son of Rabbi Raphael Evers, one of the participants in the coöperation to combat "islamophobia" after numerous antisemitic incidents, is now himself complaining about antisemitism from Muslims and leaving my city.
Commenting on this whole affair, ex-mayor Job Cohen said, just recently, that Muslims in Amsterdam are "the new Jews" and that they are currently undergoing the same experience as the "old Jews" during the occupation of Amsterdam under German national socialism.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Of course, I and Job Cohen do broadly belong to the same "Leftist Church" ("church" clearly used figuratively and having no religious connotations). So do most of the people I know in Holland, who have the highest regard for him.
Attacks by young Moroccans on Jews
in some parts of Amsterdam is certainly a nasty problem, though Willem Wagenaar of the Anne Frank House noted last week that in recent years violence against Jews and Jewish institutions has fallen sharply (see link here).
http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/netherlands-too-small-muslims-and-jews
This would suggest that increased public attention to the subject is derived more from the political interest of some people (for example, Geert Wilders and others who share his political orientation with regard to Muslims) than because the problem has become more acute.
The same study by the Anne Frank House also shows that violence against Muslims has increased in the last five years, again with a decline in 2009. This autumn shots were fired at one mosque, another was set on fire, and many Muslim places of worship received threatening letters. Concerned Muslims decided to keep watch overnight at their mosques.
Aissa Zanzan of the Amsterdam Union of Mosques admits there’s a problem, but is more concerned about the street abuse of individual Muslims.
"I get almost daily reports of such incidents, which are almost taken for granted. People don’t even notice any more when they are called names or spat at. Old women or young girls with a headscarf, who are very recognizable as Muslims, are especially the victims of verbal abuse. From things like "terrorist" or "backward Muslims" to "head off back to your own country."
According to Mr Zanzan, the perpetrators are usually white Dutch people, often with a low educational level.
I can add that it is unlikely that there are Jews among these attackers. Unfotualely, Jews – like other human beings – are all too capable of being violent racists, and we have all too many examples here in Israel; but I don’t think that Jews in Holland have this tendency.
So, you have a group (Muslims in Holland) of whom some members are attacking members of another group (Jews in Holland) and are themselves being attacked by members of a third group (Dutch people who are neither Muslim nor Jewish, often with a low educational level).
So, what to do about it?
A) Let the Jews go away from Holland, and until they go they should hide their being Jewish while on the street.
B)Let the Muslims go away from Holland, and until they go they should hide their being Muslims while on the street.
C)Let both the Jews and the Muslims go away from Holland, and until they go all of them should hide their identity while on the street.
D) Give all Jews a police escort any time they leave their homes, in order to protect them from being attacked, and also give all Muslims a police escort every time they leave their homes, in order to both prevent them from attacking Jews and protect them from being attacked by low educational people who are neither Muslim nor Jewish.
E) Try some educational work to make everybody in Holland stop attacking other people, and specifically try to explain to young Muslims of Moroccan origin that attacking Jews is wrong and nasty in itself, and also undermines their own position in Holland and helps the political groups which would like to get rid of them.
What would you say?
There may have been some lingering doubts as to whether Keller is simply a benighted do-gooder, or actually an aider and abettor of evil.
The alliance with Arafat indicates he is the latter.
In addition, the sheer volume and capaciousness of his posts on GOV spanning two threads indicates he is not only well versed in Alinskyite tactics but is consciously trying to deploy them here. As such, his eye is not, of course, on persuading any of the principled readers here, but rather to sow seeds of doubt and appeal to the lurking residues of PC MC (which itself retains the Leftist virus albeit in "decaffeinated" forms) in other readers.
I wouldn't doubt that Keller has been assidiously busy in dozens, if not scores, of other forums and comments threads on the Net, seeing that as an important area in the overall propaganda war.
The Hesperado
Hesperado wrote:
"he is not only well versed in Alinskyite tactics but is consciously trying to deploy them here."
In the term "Alinskyite tactics", new to me, I assumue you must be refering to Saul Alinsky.
If you really meant to compare me to Alinsky - well, I am sometimes a bit vain, but I can't pretend to be worthy of such a compliment.
But thank you anyway.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Alinsky
Saul David Alinsky (January 30, 1909 – June 12, 1972) was an American community organizer and writer.
He is generally considered to be the founder of modern community organizing and has been compared in Playboy magazine to Thomas Paine as being "one of the great American leaders of the nonsocialist left."
In the course of nearly four decades of organizing the poor for social action, Alinsky made many enemies, but he has received praise from an array of public figures.
His organizing skills were focused on improving the living conditions of poor communities across North America. In the 1950s, he began turning his attention to improving conditions of the African-American ghettos, beginning with Chicago's and later traveling to other ghettos in California, Michigan, New York City, and a dozen other "trouble spots".
His ideas were later adapted by some US college students and other young organizers in the late 1960s and formed part of their strategies for organizing on campus and beyond.
Time magazine once wrote that "American democracy is being altered by Alinsky's ideas," and conservative author William F. Buckley said he was "very close to being an organizational genius."
Adam Keller wrote:
Hesperado wrote:
"he is not only well versed in Alinskyite tactics but is consciously trying to deploy them here."
In fact, I did write that, but for some strange reason, my post which I finalized and which Keller obviously saw, if but for a few fleeting seconds, no longer exists.
I can't imagine why it was seen fit to be yanked.
Hesperado --
Your comment wasn't yanked; it was quarantined by Blogger as suspected spam. I just released it.
Blogger's comment spam filter is not very smart -- it flags a lot of ordinary comments as "spam", while letting quite a bit of the real spam go right on through. It's annoying.
I release the comments as soon as I find them lodged in the lazar house -- I mean, spam filter.
@Adam Keller,
"What would you say?"
I'd say that we're going to celebrate Christmas over here, so Merry Christmas (to all!), and before I get back in a few days, to fill the dark void between Christmas and Newyear, I am going to leave you with a bit of Christmas fun from Israel, enjoy ;-)
Jihad Bells from Bethlehem
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Hesperado: There may have been some lingering doubts as to whether Keller is simply a benighted do-gooder, or actually an aider and abettor of evil.
The alliance with Arafat indicates he is the latter.
Of that there is little doubt. Those who conferred an air of legitimacy upon Yasser Arafat − the grandfather of modern Islamic terrorism − have blood on their hands that will NEVER wash off.
Too bad Suha will never allow the autopsy findings to be released which probably show Yasser's body was riddled with HIV/AIDS from his homosexual orgies, even as he proclaimed himself to be a righteous Muslim leader.
Arafat was the very worst sort of fraud and hypocrite. There is no Hell sufficiently enduring or torturous to adequately punish his sort of evildoing.
To Sagunto
The film is very well made indeed. I know the group who made it. They are first-rate propagandists, real pros.
I am going to pass it on to the Mayor of Bethlehem who happens to be a Christian and to all the Christian merchants of Bethlehem who are right now preparing to make the best profit of the year out of selling souvenirs to the pilgrims flooding into the city. I am sure all of them would laugh, too.
And Happy Christmas also to you and yours, of course. We just got photos from my wife's daughter who lives with her family in Hengelo, far to the east of where you are, showing their garden deep in snow. It seems you are going to have a real White Christmas in Holland and all over Europe this year (perhaps a bit too much…)
.
Happy Christmas, anyway!
Zenster wrote:
Those who conferred an air of legitimacy upon Yasser Arafat − the grandfather of modern Islamic terrorism − have blood on their hands that will NEVER wash off. (…)
Arafat was the very worst sort of fraud and hypocrite. There is no Hell sufficiently enduring or torturous to adequately punish his sort of evildoing.
A very touching concern about bloodshed from the person who wrote:
(…) Nearly fifty odd Muslim nations that all must be brought to heel. No nation on Earth possesses the military might or financial wealth to mount invasions or combat operations in all of these different locations. The sole cost-effective measure for dealing with such a widely distributed number of substantial targets is nuclear weapons. No other method can deliver the results needed in the timespan required.
Or are you going to try to deny that you wrote that?
By the way, Mr. "blood on their hands that will NEVER wash off", a small question.
When planning your nuclear extravangaza in fifty odd Muslim nations, did you give some thought to the idea of evacuating Israel in advance? Or are you planning on letting us here get a fresh dose of heavy radioactivity with every gust of wind, and letting the children of Tel Aviv die a very slow and lingering death, with you safe and sound in your European home wringing your hands and saying that this is a very regrettable collateral damage, a necessary price for ridding the world of the Muslim threat?
But Arafat was the very worst sort of fraud and hypocrite, and there is no Hell sufficiently enduring or torturous to adequately punish his sort of evildoing. Very true. .
One more little question, Mr. "Friend of the persecuted Christian Copts in Egypt"?
How many years would it take for the Evil persecuting government of Egypt to kill as many Christian Copts as would be killed in one second by a single nuclear bomb launched at Cairo by a Liberating, Pure-Hearted, Counter-Jihading West?
But we are all agreed: Arafat was the very worst sort of fraud and hypocrite, and there is no Hell sufficiently enduring or torturous to adequately punish his sort of evildoing.
Baron Bodissey,
I didn't realize there was that defect in identifying spam. I may have quite a few lost comments at my own blog over the years!
Baron Bodissey,
P.S.: I just realized, if my comment went initially straight to the spam folder, how did Keller see it before you liberated it?
Keller's excursion into radiating subthread #1,037 -- the supposed hypocrisy of Zenster -- indulges in at least one logical fallacy.
For the lay person, that fallacy can be explicated through a simple analogy:
Let's say that there are two people arguing: Peter and Paul.
1) Peter points out that Paul supports a man (let us call him "John") who advocated and actually enacted various forms of evil.
2) Paul responds by accusing Peter of advocating evil and in accusing him, doing so verbosely thus effectively trying to obfuscate through sheer quantity of verbiage.
The fallacy is easily discernible, for those with elementary sense: Paul has not even begun to refute Peter's charge. Instead, Paul has tried to deflect and distract the charge, through deployment of the tactic of Tu Quoque.
One of the major problems with the Tu Quoque tactic is that it leaves untouched the primary point of the charge. Even if it could be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that Peter himself is evil, this is utterly irrelevant to the question of whether "John" is evil -- and thus whether Paul's advocacy of "John" enables or is complicit in his evil. (It becomes even more egregious when the obfuscation through verbiage tactic is added on; though, of course, obfuscation through verbiage is a distinct rhetorical problem -- not really a logical fallacy so much as simply a brute schoolyard tactic of throwing sand in the opponent's face.)
The Hesperado
Hesperado --
Apparently Blogger sometimes posts certain comments and then later designates them as "spam" in a subsequent sweep. This has happened more than once.
All in all, quite annoying.
Hesperado: One of the major problems with the Tu Quoque tactic is that it leaves untouched the primary point of the charge.
You and I call that a "bug", whereas for people of Adam Kellar's ilk, it is a feature. Your identification of it as a "sand-in-the-face" schoolyard tactic is spot on the money.
An in-depth examination of Adam Kellar's work would reveal his routine indulgence in, and near-dependence upon, Logical Fallacies. In his particular case it goes well beyond such disputable issues of functional reasoning and into the realm of outright criminal distortion or libel as in his demonstrated willingness to invent and portray as real, attributions the exist solely in his own mind.
One is further obliged to deduce that this is an extensive habit of Adam Kellar's in light of how much external pressure, exerted by multiple parties, was required for him to admit as such and emend his argument so that it did without such patent fabrications.
All of it can be traced back to a propensity for Magical Thinking™.
It is difficult to imagine, addicted as he is to it, that Adam Kellar will accept my Christmas gift to him in the hope he might recognize and subsequently abandon a host of traits revealed in the linked article.
For anyone else who has not read Kelly O'Connell's superb analysis of how and why Modern Leftism is so reliant upon Magical Thinking™, again it is my gift in this season of giving.
Finally, thank you, Hesperado for doing so much heavy lifting in making sure to reveal Adam Keller for what he is.
"Dangerously deluded" does not even begin to adequately describe this sort of individual. "Utopian", in every worst and "at-gunpoint" definition of the term is far more applicable.
Merry Christmas, all.
Baron Bodissey,
That's even more annoying than one would think possible! With computers, anything's possible, I guess.
Zenster,
Thanks, though I must confess I haven't been doing nearly as much heavy lifting as others here. In fact, I've been avoiding it for the most part, because I know it would require a closer reading of Keller which, in turn, would arouse visceral nausea.
I would add one other observation. Aside from the Tu Quoque of Keller's lame riposte to Zenster, one detected lurking there the kind of Pacifism that George Orwell rightly disdained. Before I go further, I quote from Orwell, apropos of the troubles of his era, with two inhuman totalitarianisms at play at the time, Communism and Nazism, and all too many Leftists in the West enamored of them because they thought they offered a "new way" to correct the evil West they had learned to (self-)hate so much:
The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to the taking of life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists whose real though unadmitted motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration of totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States. Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defense of western countries.
Thus, when Keller rejects Zenster's tentative proposal to bomb Muslim nations, one senses behind that rejection not a rationally casuistic principle, but rather a prejudicial axiom, by which he also condemns the bombings the Allied West were driven to do to defeat the alliance of the megalomaniac mass-murderers the Axis Powers, Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Fascist Italy and religiously fanatical Japan.
What a mind like that does, following its own diseased logic, is end up aiding and abetting those who are most likely to massacre innocents -- in our time those doing the massacring being Muslims. He can't see this, because his disease inverts everything, Alice-in-Wonderland, Orwellian, style.
The Hesperado
Congratulations, Zenster, on having once again avoided answering inconvenient questions. And Hesperado, there is no great mystery about how I read a message which was not posted, I simply used the option to let the blog send automatically any new posting to my computer, and it seems that it does that even with messages which are not posted on the blog itself.
About your latest posting - yes, I definitely consider the bombings of Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki to be huge war crimes, though they were far from being as bad as the war crimes committed by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
Anyway, here goes:
HOW AND WHY I, TOGETHER WITH VARIOUS VALUED COLLEAGUS AND CO-WORKERS, SPENT SOME TWENTY YEARS OF MY LIFE IN (EVENTUALLY SUCCESFUL) EFFORTS TO BRING ABOUT NEGOTIATIONS AND MUTUAL RECOGNITION BETWEEN THE GOVERNMENT OF ISRAEL AND THE PALESTINE LIBERATION ORGANIZATION, HEADED BY THE LATE YASSER ARAFAT
By Adam Keller, Spokesperson of Gush Shalom, The Israeli Peace Bloc
1) General background
Ever since there were organized human societies and states, there were always people who disliked living under the rule of others and wanted to be their own masters. In some cases, the people in power were wise enough to let those who wanted to break away go. For example, when in 1908 Norway had had enough of Swedish rule and wanted to be independent, there were some Swedes who wanted to use military force to keep Norway, but wiser heads prevailed in Stockholm and Norway went its own way more or less peacefully.
However, in many cases, both ancient and modern, the rulers are very obstinate about keeping what is theirs – or what, at least, they consider to be theirs – whereupon a lot of blood is all too likely to be shed. Conspicuous examples, to cite only a few, include the King of Spain in the 16th Century refusing to let the Dutch form their own state, the King of Great Britain and his ministers in the 18th Century refusing to let the North American colonists form their own state, and various leaders and misleaders of the French Republic in the 20th Century refusing to let the Algerians form their own state.
In this kind of conflict, it is habitual for the people fighting to gain their independence to regard themselves as liberators and freedom fighters, while those trying to put them down habitually use a pejorative epithet. In earlier time, the epithet normally used in such cases was "robbers" (or "pirates", if they used ships, as did the Dutch rebels of the 16th Century). In our time, "robbers" became obsolete and had been replaced by "terrorists".
When Liberators/freedom fighters/robbers/pirates/terrorists achieve their aim and establish their own state, then all such epithets are consigned to the dust bin of history and they could be very good friends together. Unless the victorious freedom fighters, once free, use their freedom in order to eventually conquer somebody else and refuse to let him go, whereupon they unearth the "robber" or "terrorist" epithet and cheerfully make use of it themselves. Such is human nature.
My own ethnic group, the Jews, were in various times of their history, and still are at present, involved in this kind of war – in both roles, sometimes being the brave challenging "freedom fighters" and at other times being the arrogant rulers seeking to put down the "robbers" or "terrorists". In ancient times there was the noted Jewish rebel Yehudah HaMaccabee a.k.a. Judas Maccabeus, who in the 2ed Century B.C. led the band of his literal brothers against the mighty Seleucid Empire, used what would nowadays be called "guerrilla tactics", and eventually established an independent kingdom which lasted for about a hundred years – an event which Jews still commemorate in the holiday known as Hannuka, always celebrated more or less at the same time as Christmas. During its years of existence, the kingdom established by the Maccabeans had more than one occasion to cheerfully conquer and oppress sundry others. As I said, such is human nature.
In modern times, we repeated the cycle. In 1945-1947, the Jewish community of what was then British Mandatory Palestine rose against the British Empire (still mighty, but nearing its end – they chose their timing well). As usual, such people as Menachem Begin, Yitchak Shamir and Yitchak Rabin – all destined to become eventually Prime Ministers of the State of Israel – were considered to be brave Freedom Fighters by themselves and their own community and while the British military and civil authorities regarded them as dastardly Terrorists.
Such is human nature that the State of Israel, born of this brave freedom struggle against the mighty British Empire, all too soon started to have some imperial ambitions of its own, conquered and oppressed and thoroughly disinherited another people living in the same country, i.e. the Arab people known as Palestinians. These people, under such leaders as the Muslim Yasser Arafat and the Christian George Habash, thereupon proclaimed themselves Freedom Fighters and embarked on an effort to liberate their people. And the Israeli governments led by the likes of Menachem Begin, Yitchak Shamir and Yitchak Rabin proceeded to castigate them as Terrorists and make great efforts indeed to hunt them down and suppress them.
Before going on to my own role in all this, let me note that though the term "terrorist" had been in use for quite a lot of years, no internationally-accepted definition of what it means has ever been agreed upon or is ever likely to be agreed upon. Mr. Binyamin Netanyhau, during his first term as Prime Minister of Israel, once took the initiative of convening some well known Experts on Terrorism in Jerusalem for an interesting and instructive conference. They made considerable efforts to reach a definition of "terrorism" and "terrorist" which would include the likes of the Palestinian Muslim Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian nChristian George Habash, but completely exclude the likes of the Jewish Israeli Menachem Begin, Yitchak Shamir and Yitchak Rabin. There was, however, no such definition to be found, and the conference ended in failure.
Israeli law, however, has a very clear definition of a "terrorist". Any member of an organization designated by the Minister of Defense under the prescribed legal procedure to be "a terrorist organization" is, by definition, a Terrorist, and any act carried out by such a Terrorist is by definition an Act of Terrorism. Israeli law makes no distinction whatsoever about whether said Act of Terrorism was directed at a civilian target or a military one. For example, some Gazans who in the midst of a combat situation managed to blow up an Israeli tank and kill some of its crew – the act of skilled and brave combat soldiers, by any objective criteria – were upon captured prosecuted in an Israeli military court on charges of Terrorism and duly sentenced to several consecutive terms of life imprisonment.
2) My own role and that of my colleagues and co-workers, from 1975 up to the present
(To be continued)
There is still quite a lot to be told, the story is fairly well-known in Israel but apparently new to "Gates of Vienna". It will still take me some time to write it, but you are going to hear it - in full detail! Too bad, Hesperado, you will have to wade through so much more of my disagreeable musings and reminiscences.
A small aside, while in the business of quoting George Orwell. The following appeared in "Tribune", on 24 December 24, 1943.
http://orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/eaip_01
Attacking me in the Weekly Review for attacking Douglas Reed, Mr. A. K. Chesterton remarks, ‘‘My country — right or wrong’ is a maxim which apparently has no place in Mr. Orwell's philosophy.’ He also states that ‘all of us believe that whatever her condition Britain must win this war, or for that matter any other war in which she is engaged’.
The operative phrase is any other war. There are plenty of us who would defend our own country, under no matter what government, if it seemed that we were in danger of actual invasion and conquest. But ‘any war’ is a different matter. How about the Boer War, for instance? There is a neat little bit of historical irony here. Mr. A. K. Chesterton is the nephew of G. K. Chesterton, who courageously opposed the Boer War, and once remarked that ‘My country, right or wrong’ was on the same moral level as ‘My mother, drunk or sober’.
Didn't Keller say at one point -- amid his hundreds of thousands of words thus far -- that Muslims do not conceive of Sharia as applicable to non-Muslims?
Just to pick one fact out of 1,001 from a turban, we have the following:
At the symposium on 'Apostasy Punishment: Problems and Answers' organized by the cultural committee of the Syndicate of Journalists
Dr. Nasr Farid Wasel, former Egypt Mufti ... pointed out that Islamic Sharia is the practical application of all acts of the people in life, for both Muslims or non-Muslims, and that it took into account every detail of the conditions of human life from birth till one meets his God, explaining that the practice of Sharia was in the area of general issues concerning the rights of God or the people, namely the 'punishments', as the scholars put it, which have been enacted to protect the rights of God and His servants.
Just to show what a lovely system Sharia is in the informed mind of this Islamic scholar and cleric, he also said at this symposium:
...that all scholars agree that the punishment for rejecting Islam is punishable by death...
And further amplifying what a lovely system Sharia is in the minds of accredited, informed Muslims, we have this report by Joel Brinkley (mainstream news correspondent by the way), concerning what the Egyptian delegation did when someone at the Durban II conference brought up the problem of Female Genital Mutilation:
In a recent council session, a speaker asked to bring up a particularly egregious human rights problem: genital mutilation of women. Egypt objected mightily, demanding: "We will not discuss issues related to Shariah law; this will not happen."
He thundered on, joined by a colleague from Pakistan, until the item was dropped.
This little event noticed and reported by Brinkley damages two canards for the price of one:
1) that Sharia is not influential in Egypt
and
2) that Female Genital Mutilation is only a "cultural" problem with nothing to do with Islamic Sharia.
This also brings to mind another canard Keller brought up along the way -- namely, that Muslim countries don't practice Sharia, and particularly Egypt doesn't. In service of #1 above, we get the amusing spectacle of a Muslim insisting that FGM is not mandated by Sharia, while simultaneously affirming that the Egyptian Constitution is in fact based on Sharia:
"The [Egyptian] Constitution is based on the Islamic sharia law, which does not stipulate FGM, giving a wife the right to enjoy sex with her husband," Khalil Mustafa Khalil, who holds a master's degree in FGM legislation, told the independent al-Badeel newspaper.
But Egyptian Sheikh Youssif al-Badri disagreed, claiming that a ministerial decree banning FGM in Egypt a few years ago violates the Egyptian Constitution as well as Islamic principles.
Source: http://www.mg.co.za/article/2007-12-14-islamic-scholar-opposes-ban-on-female-circumcision
I will most certainly deal with the legal system of Egypt and other countries. However, you were quite insistant on hearing my responding with regard to Arafat, so it is about Arafat that you are going to hear now..
HOW AND WHY I, TOGETHER WITH VARIOUS VALUED COLLEAGUS AND CO-WORKERS, SPENT SOME TWENTY YEARS OF MY LIFE IN (EVENTUALLY SUCCESFUL) EFFORTS TO BRING ABOUT NEGOTIATIONS AND MUTUAL RECOGNITION BETWEEN THE GOVERNMENT OF ISRAEL AND THE PALESTINE LIBERATION ORGANIZATION, HEADED BY THE LATE YASSER ARAFAT
By Adam Keller, Spokesperson of Gush Shalom, The Israeli Peace Bloc
2) My own role and that of my colleagues and co-workers, from 1975 up to the present
Well, to start at the beginning, there was the war in 1967 when Israel conquered in just six days quite a lot of territories and had the delusion that they could be kept in Israeli hands forever and that there was no need to talk to our contemptible neighbors because we were so strong and powerful. The Prime Minister we had then, name of Golda Meir (a regular participant in this blog, latté island uses her picture to identify – I really can’t understand why) embodied this mood of stupid arrogance and rebuffed the offers of Anwar a-Sadat, President of Egypt, to make peace based on Israel withdrawing from the Sinai Peninsula. She was also well known for stating that there was no such thing as a Palestinian People.
I was quite young at the time but already started to be politically involved. I well remember the feeling of suffocation, the cloying disgust whenever we saw the PM o television. And then came the war in October 1973, a hard war where Israel lost nearly 3000 soldiers, a war which could have been prevented had Golda Meir showed a bit more sense.
At the end of the war, Israeli and Egyptian soldiers were scattered in very convoluted along very convoluted front lines on both sides of the Suez Canal, still from time to time shooting at each other but in between fraternizing a bit and on occasions even playing football in no man's land. And soldiers who returned from the front demonstrated in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem for two months until Golda Meir at last gave in and resigned – a glorious day that was!
Anyway, peace with Egypt seemed well set on its way, though it would take several more years and the dramatic personal visit of President Sadat to Jerusalem to finally clinch the deal. But what was needed was not only peace with Egypt, important as that certainly was, but also peace with the Palestinians, who are our direct neighbors, who have the deepest grievance against us because after all we did create our state in what had been their country, and without whom we would never real peace and acceptance in our Middle East environment. Making peace with the Palestinians necessarily meant talking with the organization and the leader which the Palestinians themselves accepted – i.e. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) headed by Yasser Arafat. The prospect was distasteful to many Israelis, who regarded Arafat as a blood-soaked terrorist. But then, the prospect of talking to the government of Israel was at least as distasteful to many Palestinians, who regarded Israelis as blood-soaked conquerors. Both sides' distaste had all too real reasons I n various bloody acts of the recent and less recent past. Nevertheless, for our own future as well as the Palestinians', this reluctance had to be overcome, our government had to be gotten to sit at the table with the Palestinians and vice versa, with a view to the only long-term sustainable solution: Two states, side by side, Israel and Palestine – Israel in its internationally-recognized borders, as they were between 1949 and 1967, with its capital in West Jerusalem; Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, its capital in East Jerusalem.
To further this aim the Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace (ICIPP) was founded in 1975. The core group of its founders were dissident people who came from deep inside the Israeli political, military or economic establishment and who came to the conclusion that government policies as they were at the time were disastrous for our long-term survival.
There was for example Major General (ret.) Matti Peled, a career officer who had been a member of the IDF general staff during the 1967 Six Day War and later became a noted scholar, founder of the Arabic Language and Literature Department of the Tel Aviv University.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matti_Peled
There was also Ya'akov Arnon, a noted economist who was born in Holland as Jaap van Amerongenm survived the Holocuase in hiding, headed the Zionist Federation of the Netherlands and then went to Israel and became director-general of the Ministry of Finance and later Chairman of the Board of the Israeli Electricity Company.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaakov_Arnon
And Arie "Lova" Eliav who was Secretary General of the Israeli Labour Party, then Israel's ruling party, who had broken away out of disgust with PM Golda Meir's policies
And Uri Avnery, who was already then a well-known dissident with a long journalistic and parliamentary career to his credit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uri_Avnery
And in addition to the VIP's there were the younger grassroots activists of whom I was one. I was then a history student at Tel Aviv University and involved in a group called CAMPUS which in Hebrew is the acronym of "Student Social and Political Involvement", a joint Jewish-Arab student group (that was where I met the whiskey-drinking Muslims who are my bosom friends up to the present).
We and the VIP's worked quite well together. Our VIP's engaged in alternative diplomacy, meeting with representatives of the PLO in Paris and London – first secretly, later more and more openly. Rabin, then in his first term as PM, was ready to meer Matti Peled who was his old army buddy and get messages from Arafat – but at that time was not willing send messages back, which would have been the effective start of negotiations. Still, there were built contacts and channels bypassing the Foreign Ministry which were very instrumental towards official negotiations decades later.
We the younger activists were active on the streets, picketing the Ministery of Defence and chanting "Talk to the PLO now – now, now, now!". We often got arrested since the Tel Aviv police considered picketing the Defense Ministry a "security risk". It took some years before the police gave in and let us demonstrate there freely. And we also went out in the night to cover Tel Aviv with graffiti calling for negotiations with the PLO.
Then Begin came to power and he did not want to see our people or get any messages from Arafat – except on issues of prisoner exchanges where our people were involved. And in 1982 he tried invading Lebanon in an effort to destroy the PLO altogether – which failed, though quite a lot of people got killed horribly. During the Siege of Beirut Uri Avery crossed the lines and met with Arafat, the first direct meeting with him. The interview with Arafat, expressing willingness to have peace with Israel, was printed in Avnery's paper Haolam Hazeh and we also distributed copies in the mass anti-war rally outside the Tel Aviv townhall.
Afterwards there were the years when any contact with members of the PLO was forbidden by Israeli law, between 1986 and 1993, and the act of shaking the hand of Arafat – or of any member of the PLO – carried a maximum penalty of three years' imprisonment. We embarked on the double-pronged strategy of on the one hand challenging the law, holding meetings with the PLO in defiance of it and getting people prosecuted and imprisoned and making political speeches in court and having demonstrations outside the prison walls to gather public support for the idea of negotiations with the PLO.
I remember Abie Nathan, who maintained the Voice of Peace pirate radio station broadcasting from a boat off the Tel Aviv shore, really a most bold and courageous man. He came back from meeting Arafat in Tunis, and was detained and told by the police investigator: "You are charged with having broken the Anti-Terrorist Ordianance by having shaken the hand of Yasser Arafat" to which Nathan replied: "Oh, sure I did it. Here are photos of the meeting, and video films, and recodings of every word he said to me and I said to him which shows he is willing to make peace provided the Palestinians get their state. Do you need more evidence that I broke your law or is this enough?" He got half a year in prison, there were huge demonstrations at the prison gates every Friday noon. When he finished his terms there was a cavalcade of hundreds of cars following him from the prison to his home in Tel Aviv. He rested at home three days, then went to meet again with Arafat and went through everyhtinh again – police, court, prison, demonstrations. I was involved in organizing the weekly demos.
And also we made full use of the loophole which the law left, that a meeting with the PLO was not a criminal offence if carried out in the framework of an academic conference – so we got many European and American universities to hold academic conferences and invite Israeli peace activists and Palestinians from the PLO who could meet with impunity as long as they stayed inside the conference hall and there were some European or American academics present as "chaperons".
Then in January 1993 this stupid law was repealed and the government embarked on secret negotiations with the PLO on its own, and then of course in September 1993 Rabin shook the hand of Arafat on the White House lawn. In fact, I myself did not meet Arafat face to face until he came over to Gaza after Oslo was signed, though I have long before that met several of his senior aides in various European cities. Then I was in several meetings. I think the photos which latté island uncovered on our website are from the meeting in Hebron in 1994, the third time that I met him. It was an especially cordial meeting, at the time we had very good reasons to expect that a definite peace agreement was just around the corner and that there would be no more bloodshed. There were many senior Israeli government officials waiting to meet him, too, ministerial aides to the Israeli Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of Trade and Industry who were due to meet Arafat on the following day with regard to their spheres.
Arafat was very completely honest about where he stood – he spoke quite openly to us and also to the Israeli government people. He had made a deal, he recognized Israel, he restricted himself to demanding the West Bank and Gaza which are just 22% of what had been Mandatory Palestine, he called off the armed attacks against Israel, he put in prison Palestinians who wanted to continue the armed struggle. All this was, however, based on one clear assumption – that Israel would keep its part of the deal, which means that there would be a Palestinian state in place by May 1999, according to the timetable stipulated in the Oslo Agreement. If this did not take place, then of course all bets were off, as Arafat ,ade very clear to everybody he talked to – Israelis, Americans, Europeans, everybody.
He meant to keep to the deal, had Israel kept its part. Not because of any special goodness in his heart (I don’t trust to the goodness in any politican's heart, be it a Palestinian, an Israeli, or any other nationality) but because he had every reason to keep it. A Palestinian state in 1999 would have been the fulfilment of the Palestinians' dream, Arafat would have gone down in their history as the great liberator – and he would have been a Head of State.
I think Rabin meant to keep his part of the deal, and had he survived things might have been very different. However, Rabin was assassinated, neither Netanayhu nor Barak who followed him were serious about keeping their part of the deal (Barak claimed he had made the Palestinians a "generous offer" which in fact included Israel keeping in its hands the Jordan Valley which is more than 30% of the West Bank.
So, the timetables were not kept, the Israeli obligation to end the occupation and let the state of Palestine come into being was not kept – and the bets were off, and there was very much violence and bloodshed which could have been avoided, and Yasser Arafar was again tainted as "the terrorist" quote unqote.
To sum up my own part: Twice, in May 2002 and again in September 2003, we had a information of PM Sharon intending to send commandos into the Presidential Compound in Ramallah to capture or kill Arafat (which would have come to the same, as he did not intend to be taken alive). Both times I organized a group of about 15 Israeli activists to come and stay the night, and once there we informed the media that we were there and that any commandos would need to deal with our presence. In the second of these cases we had a specific confirmation from a Sharon aide that the presence of Israeli citizens was indeed a complicating factor, one of several which led to the canceling of the commando raid.
A year later Arafat died. Many Palestinians believe that he was indeed poisoned at the order of Sharon, though this cannot be either proven or disproven. In any case the death of Arafat changed nothing in Israel's basic predicament, we still need to get out of the West Bank and make peace with the Palestinians. Having missed the chance to make and keep a deal with Arafat, we now need to have a deal also involving Hamas, which makes things more complicated but not impossible – as I already noted, I and my friends also had and have some contacts with Hamas.
'Nuff Said!
Adam Keller --
'Nuff Said!
Truer words were never spoken. I'm closing this thread.
You've said your piece, perhaps a bit more than your piece. I suggest you start your own blog.
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