Thursday, March 25, 2004
"MODERATE ISLAM" -- ANOTHER ANGLE
Given my long letter regarding Islam, moderation and violence, this exchange between Robert Spencer and an explicitly not-so-moderate Muslim is well worth reading. The part that really hits home is this comment of Spencer's:
As I have said many times, and people still don't seem to understand the point, I have known innumerable moderate Muslims, but I have yet to see a convincing, comprehensive presentation of moderate Islam. Get the difference?
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 12:31 PM
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
LETTER TO A MUSLIM
On March 23, 2004, I received an email from a Muslim who responded to things I've written in my blog about Islam. This wasn't the first such email I'd received, but it was one of the more reasonable-sounding ones. I shared it with some friends, and our discussions led me to write the following response
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ___________________________
> Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2004 11:52 PM
> To: Burch, Greg
> Subject: Islam/Your website
>
> Hello Gregory,
>
> I just recently came across your website on the Net. It was hurtful to read
> the many things you had to say about Islam and Muslims, and I really feel
> that you should tone down the hateful rhetoric. I'm not sure if you've had
> bad personal experiences with Muslims, but it's obvious that you have many
> bad impressions of us.
I had a very bad personal experience with Muslims. Two and half years ago 19 Muslims - in the name of their religion - killed thousands of innocent people in buildings in which I have done business many times.
My first instinct was to respond to your letter with either three numbers, or two words: "911" or "Salmon Rushdie". But it's obvious that you write with sincerity and represent something I do not understand - a relatively moderate Muslim. So let me respond at greater length.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST ...
posted by Greg 9:51 PM
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
ONE BOMB DEFUSED
Remember "The Population Bomb"? Remember how human population was going to grow to 20 billion, 30 billion... until we all starved? Well, I was certainly one of the legion of people who believed that this was inevitable well into the 1980s.
Not true. Even the BBC, reliable mouthpiece for the Red/Green alliance, has a story today announcing what everyone who's paying attention has come to realize. Fertility rates have been falling, falling, falling. Now projections are that human population will top out at under 10 billion by 2050, to decline thereafter.
How about that?
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 11:05 AM
Monday, March 22, 2004
"THE GATES OF HELL"
Hamas founder and leader Ahmed Yassin was killed in an Israeli rocket attack yesterday. Yassin usually gets described as Hamas' "spiritual leader." I wonder if he is what all the crystal-power ju-ju folks have in mind when they talk about "spirituality."
Hamas' official response was to say that the killing had served to "open the gates of hell." Seems to me like they've been open for a long time now.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:10 AM
Sunday, March 21, 2004
IRAQ, ONE YEAR ON
Read Mark Steyn's anniversary score-card.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:36 AM
FIRECRACKER?
I'm not the only one who finds the alleged shooting of Chen Shui Ben strange. This CNN story mentions the idea now floating around that the pre-election assasination attempt may have been staged. The circumstances make it impossible to determine the truth, apparently. The incident happened while firecrackers were going off, Chen and Lu went to hospitals where wounds could have been engineered, no bullet has been recovered... The bullet hole in the windshield of the car in which Chen and Lu were riding would be the only evidence that would support the claim that there really was a shooting.
Maybe I'm jut too suspicious...
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:29 AM
Saturday, March 20, 2004
THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS
Here's a very good review of a book about one of the crazy ultra-conservative Catholic orders that folks like Mel Gibson are in thrall to. Recommended to those who think the religious nutjobs are all mumbling Koranic verses. And just like those who say that violent intolerance isn't part of "mainstream Islam," there are those who say that the kinds of things described in this article aren't "mainstream Catholicism." Maybe not, but then why is the current pope making saints of the founders of these orders and why is the Vatican hierarchy covering up their weird sexual problems?
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 4:27 PM
ALLAH'S NUKES -- CLOSER THAN YOU THINK
Here's a story that's not getting play in the big media, but it's from UPI, not a fringe source.
A plot to replace Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf with the nuclear engineer who sold the country's secrets to America's self-avowed enemies is being organized by politico-religious leaders, said one of the leaders present at a recent meeting of religious and political parties.
The UPI story reports on a meeting of Pakistani fundamentalist leaders that included General Hamid Gul:
Gen. Gul, according to one of the participants, explained how he was assembling "a strong team of faithful Muslims to take control of the country to serve the nation and the Muslim world with true Islamic spirit." Gul then added, "A.Q. is our natural leader."
Whether "it's all Bush's fault" or not, what will the appeasers do if the Islamofascists take control of the one Islamic nuclear power, Pakistan?
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:17 AM
Friday, March 19, 2004
THE PROBLEM IS ISLAM
If I have a single reader who has the slightest doubt that the root of terrorism is Islam, please, please go read this. It is a translation of the sermon given this week in a mosque in Gaza by an "official" immam, employed by the Palestinian Authority -- what passes for a Palestinian "government." Make yourself read the whole thing.
Here's the thing -- the violently racist diatribe you see is not "radical" Islam; it's mainstream, because it is solidly rooted in the text of the Koran and the accepted "facts" of Mohammed's life (the "sunnah"), which all faithful Muslims must take as the unerring word of god.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 10:36 AM
Monday, March 15, 2004
WHICH WORLD?
I've been ruminating on the Spanish bombings and their impact on the elections there ... lots of dark thoughts. This one percolated up from the gloom:
While the leftist intellectuals who captured our high culture spent the last twenty years pondering the question of how the post-modern world would develop, the pre-modern world was reasserting itself in places where those intellectuals had no impact at all. Of course, the fantasies of post-modernism are in fact just that, but they have a deadly dangerous impact. The real life-or-death struggle is between the pre-modern and the modern. The only impact that the so-called post-modern has is as a fifth column within the modern. How is this? The quintessential element of the post-modern mentality is the belief that judgment is wrong and that there is no truth, that all things are relative and that no matter of culture can be judged superior to another. Europe is deeply infected with this malaise. America's secular cultural leadership is also a vector for it, sad to say. (Where, oh where are the secular modernists?) Can we fight off the infection of post-modernism, while at the same time battling the terrorist killers of the pre-modern? Today, I have only hope -- a slender thread to hang by.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 9:46 AM
Sunday, March 14, 2004
AL QUAEDA VICTORY
The anti-war Socialist party has won the elections in Spain. I guess they'll try next in England, to strip us of our last ally.
I wonder if we'll have to liberate Europe again?
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 4:13 PM
CHINA PROPERTY
Here's the Beeb's item on the closing of the National People's Congress, and the adoption of a constitutional principle protecting private property.
What a long, strange road it's been...
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 11:41 AM
Saturday, March 13, 2004
ANOTHER EPISTLE FROM THE RELIGION OF PEACE
The evidence seems to be growing that Islamofascists are behind the Spanish bombings. Now the question is whether the majority of opinion in Europe blames "American imperialism." I'm betting on that.
UPDATE: Le Monde coming out against terrorism? Surely they haven't changed their stripes? It's sad that more people had to die to make it happen, but maybe, just maybe, they get it now. It's a war.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 9:48 PM
Friday, March 12, 2004
X-RAY FANTASIES
I'm pretty skeptical of the report in The Mirror relating "horror stories" from one of the British subjects recently released from Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo. The source of my skepticism? The allegations that prostitutes were used to sexually torment the captives. I'm afraid this is something Americans just wouldn't think of. Only a moslem fundamentalist would imagine that.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 10:14 AM
Thursday, March 11, 2004
SPANISH BOMBS
Right now, I'd say there's a better than even chance that the Madrid bombings were the work of al Quaeda. At least one source is reporting that they've claimed responsibility and, being perhaps more aware of history than most Westerners, bin Laden has seen the Spanish reconquista as an important point on the timeline that he believes justifies his war against the non-Islamic world.
Operations in Europe will be easier for al Quaeda and their allies. If they begin stepped-up operations there, I wonder if it will stiffen the backbones of Europeans against the much more imminent threat they face from Islamic expansionism...
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 6:26 PM
THE LAW
Humphrey's Law of the Efficacy of Prayer
In a dangerous world there will always be more people around whose prayers for their own safety have been answered than those whose prayers have not.
Found along with many other "laws" at Edge.org.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 11:17 AM
SUPER-SIZED SYMBOL
Yao Ming and McDonalds -- it doesn't get any more meaningful for me...
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:45 AM
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
I AM NOT A REPUBLICAN
Antroy, I am not, nor will I ever be a Republican. If I appear to be one, it's only because you think of politics in the old-fashioned, purely left-right continuum.
Just so it's clear, the main reasons i am not a Republican, are the same reasons I'm not a Democrat: I don't think the government should have so much power to tell me what to do. The Republicans have their set of favorite government intrusions into my liberty, and the Democrats have theirs.
(For the record, Antroy -- who is standing here as I type this -- thinks this is a "grossly unfair" post and one that is "so typical of my blogging style." He wants to be able to make a rebuttal. To that I say, get a blog.)
GB, THHota
posted by Greg 10:15 AM
CHINA'S DEMOGRAPHIC TIME-BOMB
Ever hear of the terrible low-budget film, Mars Needs Women? Well, China may have the same problem:
A serious shortage of women is looming in China, threatening family and social stability in the world's most populous country. Official statistics show that in 2002, for every 100 newborn girls, there were 117 boys born. If this trend continues, China will have up to 40 million more men than women by 2020.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:30 AM
THE IRANIAN BOMB
Iran continues to secretly work toward making nuclear weapons, while our "allies" hobble attempts to hold the Islamofascist theocrats in charge there to acoount.
No big deal. I'm sure it will all work out OK; after all, Islam is a religion of peace, right?
Martyrdom is one of the highest statuses before Allaah, and the martyrs are the closest of His slaves to Him. There is no status higher than that of siddeeq apart from martyrdom. Allaah loves to take martyrs from among His slaves, who shed their blood for His love and to earn His pleasure, preferring His pleasure and His love above themselves. There is no way to attain this status except by circumstances that may lead to it such as enemies coming against the Muslims.
This is the great wisdom and those who try to put the Muslims off jihad and make them fear it, and say that jihad is no more than death, and making women widows and children orphans, pale into insignificance.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:24 AM
Monday, March 08, 2004
BUSHWHACKING SCIENCE
Leon Kass, the Chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics, has engineered a coup: He's gotten the White House to fire the few voices on the Commission who dissented from making policy based on Kass' famous "wisdom of repugnance." Here's an article by one of the fired members, Elizabeth Blackburn, who is a professor of biochemistry at the University of California at San Francisco and a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine.
Once again, I say it: These people want you and your children to die. Kass' "wisdom of repugnance" is utterly indistinguishable from the thinking of those who opposed dissection of cadavers in the 16th century.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:15 AM
LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, EVERYTHING ... AND THEN SOME
Thanks to Frank Pool (no, not "Frank Poole") for a pointer to a good article in Slate about the current state of eschatological cosmology.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:35 AM
