Friday, January 28, 2011

Interview With Wormtongue

Anjem Choudary is the best friend the Counterjihad ever had. Whenever he opens his mouth, he does a service to our cause — you know exactly where he stands, which is with his foot planted firmly upon the neck of the filthy infidel. I always want to urge him to get back in front of the microphone — “Come on, Anjem! Tell us some more!”

He’s the best recruiting tool the EDL could ever hope for.

Australia has its own version of Mr. Choudary in the person of Ibrahim Siddiq-Conlon, who wants to replace Australia’s democracy with sharia, using violence if necessary. We can only hope that similar fellows will pop up all over the Western world so that our clueless citizens might finally gain an inkling of what the real Islam is all about.

The really dangerous Muslims in the West, however, are the silver-tongues: suave, well-dressed, well-educated fellows who speak flawless English, French, or German. Men like Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, who are adept at delivering the honeyed bromides that gullible Westerners are eager to hear. These pillars of society are the chosen spokesmen for the “Muslim community” on television and in the press. Their soothing doubletalk supplies the anesthetic required to make Islamization a relatively painless process, so that no one wakes up screaming on the operating table before the most important political and cultural organs have been fully subverted.

Tariq RamadanThe “Swiss philosopher” Tariq Ramadan is the most dangerous of them all. No one is more skilled at telling Europeans what they want to hear. He knows exactly how to push all the right buttons in the elite European psyche. Tolerance, guilt, racism, sexism, self-satisfaction, complacency — every vulnerable trait is expertly manipulated by the Alpine heir to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Mr. Ramadan recently gave an interview to Deutsche Welle. To say that the interviewer threw him softballs for questions is an injustice — halal cream puffs would be a better description.

First, the treacly intro from Deutsche Welle — notice the absolutely unequivocal statement about a “tide of Islamophobia sweeping Europe”. No “alleged”, no “some observers believe”, no need to verify any empirical facts — if Baroness Warsi said it, it must be true:

One of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential thinkers of the 21st century, Tariq Ramadan says Islam in Europe needs to be redefined. With Islamophobia passing the dinner-table test, his message is more urgent than ever.

According to a recent study carried out at the University of Leipzig, more than a third of Germans believe Germany would be better off without Islam. Last week Europe’s foremost Muslim thinker, Tariq Ramadan, spoke to a captive audience in Berlin about the tide of Islamophobia sweeping Europe and his own vision of a “shared pluralism.” A professor of Islamic Studies at Oxford University, Ramadan is also president of the European Muslim Network. He is a polarizing figure, seen by some as the “Muslim Martin Luther” and by others as a master of doublespeak. He spoke to Deutsche Welle about western perceptions of Islam today and the need for Muslims to become full partners in democratic societies.

Tariq Ramadan — Double-Tongue

Below are some excerpts from the DW interview, with my interpolated commentary:

In your book “What I Believe,” you say that the debate about integration borders on the obsessive and that what we need now is a ‘post-integration’ approach based on contribution.

We need to stop referring to integration. By ‘post-integration,’ I mean that we need to come to an understanding that the success of integration is to stop talking about it. If we keep on repeating year after year, generation after generation, that ‘they’ need to integrate, we imply that there is a host country, and they are its immigrants.

What Mr. Ramadan is attempting here is to expand the definition of “Islamophobia” to include any discussion of integration. Those who keep talking about integration then become Islamophobes by definition. Since Islamophobia has already been successfully identified as a form of racism, discussing integration is also racism, and may thus be prosecuted.

Criticizing Islam is already forbidden by law, as Geert Wilders and Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff have discovered. If Tariq Ramadan has his way, referring to the lack of integration among Muslim immigrants will become just as punishable.

Besides, immigration is over. It’s a done deal — Europe is Muslim. The matter is as settled as climate-change science:
It’s over! Muslims are not immigrants in Germany. They are German, they are European.

And then he moves in with some of those soothing bromides to dull any lingering pain from what he just said:

Then, what we need to do is ask: as a member of this society, what is my contribution going to be? If you are always perceived as ‘to be integrated,’ the question is: where do you come from? We have to stop asking: where do you come from and ask: where are we going — together?

Actually, that’s a good question: where are we going?

And who says we’re “together”? Oh, wait: mustn’t talk about it; that would be a reference to “integration”.

Islam in fact contributes all the warm, fuzzy things that good Europeans love so much. Architecture! Books! And most important: ethics!

We have to be visible and vocal not only in the religious field but everywhere. Our contribution can be philosophical, artistic, and as I advocate in my book, creative! To be a Muslim isn’t just to say: Islam is not violent, it is not discriminatory — no, it’s more than that. It is architecture, books, imagination, ethics. And the more you give to society, the less you will be perceived as a negative factor.

Now it’s time to poke at Thilo Sarrazin, the bête noire of the moment in Europe:

What [controversial German author] Thilo Sarazzin [sic] basically said was: look at these Muslims, they are a problem and they are lowering our level of intelligence. He is wrong, of course, and this was a racist stand.

Mr. Sarrazin is “wrong” in what sense? Is not the IQ of Muslim immigrants demonstrably lower than that of native Germans, even after several generations? Is this not an established statistical fact?

It doesn’t matter, of course. Where “Islamophobia” is concerned, truth is not a valid defense.

DW, of course, lets the “racist” canard pass without comment or quibble. In fact, the interviewer goes on to ask even puffier questions, as we will see in a moment. But first there’s this:

But the only way to answer it is to point to contribution. The only right answer is practical: we have to be witnesses of the potentialities we have in our societies to express ourselves in a positive way.

But that is exactly what Thilo Sarrazin did — he pointed to the contributions of German Muslims. Or, rather, to their lack of contributions.

But Mr. Ramadan doesn’t require actual contributions, as his second sentence makes clear: Muslims are to be recognized and esteemed for their potentialities — that is, we are to believe that somehow, someday, they might, just might change their ways and actually contribute something of value to German society. No evidence is required, of course. We have to take it on faith.

And besides, discussing the lack of evidence would be obsessing on “integration”, yet again.

Next comes a softer-than-soft question:

But when you have public and institutional hostility to Muslims, it restricts the scope of their participation in social, economic, political and cultural life. How can we break this deadlock?

When I come to Germany and other European countries I can see that, yes, there is a trend to Islamophobia, racism and a rejection of Muslims, but lots of people are not happy about it and know there’s something wrong.

So now it’s time for a little flattery: “Yes, it’s true that a lot of Europeans are evil racists. But not all! Some of you are decent and enlightened people, and would never harbor Islamophobic thoughts! In this latter group I include present company, of course…”

So you are right, a fracture within society is possible. But what I see behind the scenes at the local level are a lot of Europeans willing to listen.

Muslims instruct, Europeans listen. How could it be any other way?

But enough with the flattery. Now it’s time to pull out the big club: NAZIS!

This should be the driving force of change: not Muslims on their own, but Germans from different backgrounds sharing the same principle: we are not going to allow racism to return to this country in a way that is very, very damaging for all citizens.

In other words: “If the anesthesia fails to work properly, and the patient becomes agitated and upset as the Islamization operation proceeds, we hit him on the head with the Nazi club.”

That will put him out for the duration.

Now for the hardest question Wormtongue will get — Islam and women. Watch him dance around this one:

According to the surveys, what Germans are most bothered by is the way they see women treated in Islam: You believe that a woman can find liberation in Islam, that Islam was originally a feminist religion. Germans see it as patriarchal and oppressive in its practice. How do you explain this gulf?

Because both are right. When you study the scriptural sources then you understand that there is a message of equality and liberation. But when you look at what Muslims are doing, Germans are not completely wrong to see a problem. In Muslim communities, I can see myself that there is a lot of discrimination; women are not involved in education, the mosque, not always respected as human beings and within marriages. There is a problem. I constantly repeat: Islam has no problem with women, but Muslims do. This is why I train Muslim women in the way they deal with the scriptural sources and they way they deal with the community.

So Islam has no problem with women, you say? Uh-huh. Right.

It just happens to find a woman’s testimony worth half that of a man. And instructs a man to beat his wife if she is disobedient. But not too hard, mind you.

A competent interviewer would have had a copy of the Koran, the authenticated hadith, and Reliance of the Traveller on hand so that he could quote relevant passages and ask meaningful questions designed to draw out Mr. Ramadan’s opinion about them. But Doubletongue knows very well that no one in the media is that diligent or well-informed.

Besides, it would be Islamophobic to ask such questions, so they will never be asked.

Next comes more meaningless boilerplate:

The missing discourse in Islam is about women: not as mother, not as daughter, not as sister, but woman as woman. What does spiritual liberation of the being mean? What do we mean by femininity and liberation? As a woman, I don’t want to be reduced to my body but you have to accept that I have a heart, I have a soul.

Then there is the question of commitment within the community, in mosques, in the scholarship and the legal Islamic authority. Women need to be involved. We can’t just repeat: we are equal before God and complementary in society. The relationship between the master and the slave is complementary, but the master is the master, and the slave is the slave.

And the final warning:

But our fellow citizens also have a responsibility not to essentialize the Islamic discourse and say: all Muslims are like this or this.

In other words: No discussing the characteristics of Muslims!

There must be no discussion of the integration of immigrants. No examination of Islamic doctrine is permitted. No one is to criticize Islam, nor may we characterize Muslim behavior.

Any of the above actions constitutes Islamophobia, and Islamophobia is a form of racism. And we all know what racism means, don’t we?

Nazi! NAZI! NAZI!! NAZINAZINAZINAZINAZINAZINAZINAZI!!!

OK, that’s enough — the patient has gone back to sleep.


Hat tip: DF.

18 comments:

imnokuffar said...

I have been called a Nazi so many times by real Nazis that it no longer has any effect. I think a lot of people are getting this way.

I just carry on with the question I was asking.

Brilliant article by the way.

Freyja's cats said...

"One of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential thinkers of the 21st century, Tariq Ramadan says Islam in Europe needs to be redefined."

Here's a little bit about TIME Magazine and its annointment of Tariq Ramadan:

TIME Magazine has featured several articles about Tariq Ramadan, such as here, where Ramadan is selected for the TIME 100, and here.

The Wikipedia article on TIME Magazine is here. It's current managing editor is Richard Spengler, who held that position from 2000-2004 and 2006-present.

That Wikipedia article on Spengler states the following:

His most recently published book is called Mandela's Way: Fifteen Lessons on Life, Love and Courage which was released in March 2010 and is based on Nelson Mandela...The book that Stengel is best known for is his collaboration with Nelson Mandela on Mandela's autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. In 1992 he signed a ghostwriting deal with publishers Little, Brown to work on the book, having first been cleared by the African National Congress as a suitable author. The book was published in 1995, and was praised by the Financial Times, which stated: "Their collaboration produced surely one of the great autobiographies of the 20th century". Stengel later served as co-producer of the 1996 documentary film Mandela, which was nominated for an Academy Award.

Stengel is married to Mary Pfaff, a native of South Africa. They have two sons.[5] The couple met while Stengel was in South Africa working on Nelson Mandela's autobiography and Mandela is godfather to their oldest son, Gabriel.


Stengel having made Mandela the godfather of his oldest son, tells you a bit something about the political leanings of Stengel.

(to be continued)

Freyja's cats said...

(ctd.)

What about the distinction of being named a "distinguished person of influence" by TIME?

Let's look at the example of former FBI agent Coleen Rowley, who was named TIME Person of the Year for 2002.

TIME selected her as the 2002 Person of the Year -- as an "FBI whistleblower" due to her actions of faulting the FBI for having failed to prevent the 9-11 al-Qaeda attack on the World Trade Center.

Rowley blamed FBI intelligence failures for the attack, and testified before the U.S. Senate and the 9/11 Commission to such.

TIME lauded Rowley's "whistleblower" actions that, essentially, tried to blame the 9/11 attacks on the FBI, as a diversion of blame from the fault of the Islamist perpetrators of the attack.

(ctd)

Freyja's cats said...

What is Coleen Rowley doing today?

Well, on Martin Luther King Day a couple of weeks ago, she was helping to lead the anti-FBI "Hands Off Our Activists" protest held at the FBI J. Edgar Hoover headquarters in Washington, DC.

The event announcement lists the following endorsing organizations: Defending Dissent Foundation, World Can't Wait, DC Bill of Rights Coalition, Montgomery County Civil Rights Coaltion, WarIsACrime.org, Democrats.com, Bill of Rights Defense Committee, DC National Lawyers Guild, CodePink, Peace Action, Progressive Democrats of America, United for Peace and Justice, Witness Against Torture, Peace of the Action, Cindy Sheehan, Friends of Human Rights, Bradley Manning Support Network, Backbone Campaign.

That's an interesting passel of communists and "useful idiots." Is it not awfully strange for a former FBI agent to be working with them?

Rowley is interviewed at that rally in this video, and her photo at that event is here.

In that photo, Rowley is wearing a sweatshirt bearing an orange-white-and-blue logo graphic of the "Free Bradley Manning" campaign. If you were to study that logo up close, you would see that the logo includes rays emanating from the communist star.

You might find it rather strange that a former FBI agent is to be found hanging out and participating with the likes of Cuba-booster communist Medea Benjamin of CODEPINK, at an anti-FBI rally at FBIHQ.

You might find it even stranger that [former FBI agent] Rowley then proceeded with the rally participants to travel to the U.S. Marines base at Quantico, Virginia, and then attempted to storm the entrance to the base as part of a "Free Bradley Manning" protest, where Manning is being held in pre-trial confinement following his leak of massive U.S. intelligence data to Wikileaks.

Here is a video of that Quantico protest march. At the 1:24 minute mark, you can see Rowley and her communist-starred sweatshirt.

Coleen Rowley, who has a law degree from the University of Iowa, has been recently appearing numerous times on Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now! program with Amy Goodman, as has Bruce Nestor, former chair of the communist-front National Lawyers Guild, who also went through the U Iowa law school during the same period of time as Rowley.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that former FBI agent Coleen Rowley, who was the chief legal advisor for the Minneapolis FBI division, was likely operating in the FBI as a left-wing agent-of-influence. She is now calling for new "Church Committee" hearings to reign in FBI surveillance and counterterrorism powers. Perhaps she was even formerly an FBI mole?

So if readers of TIME magazine have noticed a leftward drift of that publication over the decades, you haven't been dreaming.

Tariq Ramadan is just one of several examples of leftwing agents-of-influence who have been elevated by that publication.

sheik yer'mami said...

1, The science is settled: we are here, we are here to stay, Europe is Muslim, Europe is EUrabia. Its over, infidels, we'll eat you alive and there's nothing you can do about it.

2. Thilo Sarazzin is wrong because I, Tariq Ramadan, grandson of Hassan al Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, say so.

3. "Muslim contributions" spit, f*&$#, &%$#

No. I have no time for this despicable pseudo intellectual scumbag. I long to see the day when the mask is ripped off and he either goes to jail or runs back to Egypt, like Omar Bakri.

Scum. Pure scum!

In Hoc Signo Vinces† said...

In hoc signo vinces

Tariq Ramadan is nothing more than a drone of deception even to label him a philosopher of that black art would be to overate him, articulate in the points of abhorrence.

Philosopher I think not Western Academia should really get a grip of whom it bestows accolade and virtue upon.

Henrik R Clausen said...

I'm still puzzled that people take such interest in National Socialism. After all, it was an ideology that could have emerged only at a particular time and a particular place, in post-WWI Germany. How come people still use this as the Bogeyman?

Socialists of all kinds have a special responsibility here, of course, but more so Islamic leaders.

For National Socialism didn't die in May 1945. It was transplanted, primarily to Egypt, where many Germans discreetly went after WWII, probably finding the climate more attractive there than in Nuremberg. Also they found ideological similarities regarding the opinion of Jews.

When Tariq Ramadan and other Muslim Brotherhood spokesmen come to talk the case for Islam as political ideology, it is important to remember:

New form, but old enemy.

Hesperado said...

Re: Tariq Ramadan -- coincidentally, I just published on my blog a transation of some excerpts of the invaluable study of Tariq's "double-speak" by the French journalist and sociologist Caroline Fourest:

The Fourest for the trees: a translation of Caroline Fourest on Tariq Ramadan

They are excerpts from her 2004 book, Frère Tariq : Discours, stratégie et méthode de Tariq Ramadan ("Brother Tariq: Discourse, strategy and method of Tariq Ramadan"), published on the French website L'EXPRESS.fr.

Empedocles said...

"Muslims are not immigrants in Germany. They are German, they are European." This plays on an ambiguity between the notion of being a citizen of a country and being a member of an ethnicity. Multiculturalism exploits this ambiguity all the time. The problem is that "German" is defined as those who live in Germany. Therefore immigrants are German; we talk about Turkish Germans, but not German Germans, apparently there is no such thing and so Turks are as much Germans as Germans. Hopefully this fallacy is obvious once pointed out. There is more here: http://apoxonbothyourhouses.blogspot.com/2010/06/on-being-real_20.html

EscapeVelocity said...

Interview With Wormtongue


Bwahahahahahhahaa!

Freyja's cats said...

"Muslims are not immigrants in Germany. They are German, they are European."

Sorry, Mr. Ramadan -- their DNA will indicate differently.

This is where genetic genealogy comes in handy.

Also see:

Germanic peoples
Germany DNA Project
list of Germanic peoples
Germania
Germanic languages
ancient Germania (map)
Norsemen
Germanic heathenry
Germanic deities
list of Germanic gods and heroes

We Germans have our own gods and goddesses. Allah is not one of them.

kloutlichter said...

HESPERADO,that was a very interesting and educational link.That Ramadan is a sneaky bugger.I take it theses tapes are sold in islamic bookstores etc?

mace said...

Freja's cats,

Perhaps I've misunderstood.

Are you saying that the only definition of 'German' or 'European' is genetic and not political?

If that's the case,

What then is the status of Germans and their descendants who have migrated to the so-called 'settler' countries which have multi-ethnic poupulations?


How would you define an American,Australian or a Canadian?

Freyja's cats said...

@ mace:

IMHO:

The true Germanic peoples are the biological descendants of the original Germanic tribes of Germania and Scandanavia.

All persons who can trace their lineage back to the original Germanic tribes, are the Germanic peoples.

The Rus, who developed a base in "Russia," carry Viking blood. Vikings were Germanic peoples.

The Anglo-Saxon-Jute-Viking-Norman people of England were all Germanic peoples.

The Franks and Burgundians, and the other German tribes that settled in what is now France, are Germanic peoples who became Gallicized to produce the French. But they come from Germanic stock.

What is now Spain and Northern Italy, became inhabited by Germanic tribes as a result of the Great Migrations. This includes people like the Lombards (the Lombardi)of Northern Italy and the Visigoths of Spain. They may speak Italian and Spanish now, but their lineage traces back to Germanic stock.

Genetic anthropology projects like the Genographic Project of the National Geographic Society, are working towards identifying the genetic markers of ancient peoples.

The results of studies like this will assist people to determine their genetic ancestry, by testing their DNA samples and comparing the results to the genetic roadmaps that demonstrate migrations and mutations over time.

This is how, in the future, we will be able to determine the likely ancestral heritage of a person, despite modern overlays of language, religion and culture that have been imposed on them and their ancestors by political forces.

As for persons in America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the core populations from Europe that settled these areas were Germanic.

English is a Germanic language. It was given to us by the Anglo-Saxons, mixed with Roman, French, Viking and Danish influences.

The Angles and the Saxons and the Jutes were Germanic tribes that originated from the Jutland peninsula and migrated to Britain. Then came Vikings and Normans and Danes. They migrated from Germania to Britian, and then from there to North America, Australia and Canada. Thus, the core population of these landmasses is Germanic.

Some French and Spanish and Portuguese migrated to North and South America and elsewhere around the globe. The French derive from the old Germanic Franks; the Spanish carry a lot of Visigothic blood; and the Portuguese carry blood of the Suebi, which were also Germanic.

I was born in the United States. I am an American citizen. However, due to my ancestral lineage, under German law, under the legal principal of jus sanguinis, I am also a German citizen. And by language and by blood, I am Germanic. I am a descendant of the Germanic tribes of Northern Europe. Therefore, I am a German (100% by blood) living in North America, and legally possess citizenship in both the U.S. and Germany.

Freyja's cats said...

@ mace:

If asked to "define Americans, Australians and Canadians," I must say that I really can't.

There are, for example, Chinese people who hold U.S. citizenship, but who never actually lived in the U.S. They were "anchor babies" who obtained U.S. citizenship on a technicality, via Chinese mothers who made a pitstop in the U.S. to take advantage of "birth tourism." I have nothing in common with them.

There really aren't defining factors anymore. They are not distinct peoples. The Western countries might best be described as "a mess."

mace said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
mace said...

Freya's cats,

I know something about the migrations that occurred during and after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. I was really asking what, to you, is the significance, politically and socially of an individual's DNA.You've answered the question.

Freyja's cats said...

@ mace:

You wrote,

Are you saying that the only definition of 'German' or 'European' is genetic and not political?

Like most words in the English dictionary, these words have can have multiple meanings. There isn't exactly an "only" definition, as one see in looking up Webster's:

German (noun)
Definition of GERMAN
1
: a member of any of the Germanic peoples inhabiting western Europe in Roman times
2
a : a native or inhabitant of Germany b : a person of German descent c : one whose native language is German and who is a native of a country other than Germany
3
a : the Germanic language spoken mainly in Germany, Austria, and parts of Switzerland b : the literary and official language of Germany
4
often not capitalized a : a dance consisting of intricate figures that are improvised and intermingled with waltzes b chiefly Midland : a dancing party; specifically : one at which the german is danced
Origin of GERMAN
Middle English, from Medieval Latin Germanus, from Latin
First Known Use: 14th century


2European
noun
Definition of EUROPEAN
1
: a native or inhabitant of Europe
2
: a person of European descent
First Known Use of EUROPEAN
1623



You wrote,

What then is the status of Germans and their descendants who have migrated to the so-called 'settler' countries which have multi-ethnic poupulations?

Mace, I would have to return a question with a question and ask you, "The status according to whom or what?"

Under German law of Germany, my status is a German with full German citizenship. Under American law, I am an American citizen.

But there are intricacies of German law of Germany, with respect to citizenship status there, that require examining a genealogic document trail, in order to determine if a person qualifies under contemporary laws of Germany.

The government of Germany declares citizenship based on one of two legal principles:

(1) Jus sanguinis
(2) Jus soli

However, if there were to form, say, a "Congress of Germanic Peoples" (along the lines of, say, the World Jewish Congress), then that organization is free to establish its own criteria for membership. A logical criterium would be genealogical DNA testing evincing full ancestry corresponding to ancient Northern Europe circa 1 CE, with additional genealogical documentation, if available, and perhaps photographs and other biological markers, to help confirm the case.

If your question to me is, however, "How would you describe yourself?" I would say that I am a genetic "Teuton" in the sense of a direct descendant of what are today known as the ancient Germanic tribes of Northern Europe; also, that I hold contemporary German and U.S. citizenship, and that my ancestry on North American soil goes back prior to the founding of the U.S.A., marking me as a pre-Constitutional American citizen; and, that I am literate and multi-lingual in multiple Germanic and Romance languages, to Old Norse, Latin and Greek; thus, I qualify as a child of Europe, of Germanic type. My appearance is very typically "Germanic." And I enjoy beer, mead and meat.

The point being that political boundaries change over time, as does DNA acquisition, which is unique to each individual; however, certain markers of lineage in ancestral DNA remain relatively stable over time, and provide a nice basis upon which to base one's identity and self-concept.

I get called "Nazi" all the time, because I have a German name and carry my ancestry with pride. Big deal. I don't feel any negative association with this term. I'm a strong and proud German -- labels fall off like water off a duck's back. My family fought on both sides of World Wars I and II, and I'm proud as hell of 'em all. To me, it was a whopper of a big family argument.