Letters to the Editor
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Goebbels said:
"[t]he people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
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Shooter, what on earth are you talking about?
That is, if you even know....
The suit you reference is presumably the one where the group of Muslim clerics was harassed at the airport? IOW, several completely innocent men hassled by authorities for apparently no other reason than reflexive anti-Muslim bigotry? The putting-into-action of the very same animus Glenn quite clearly decries in his post?
Do you even notice it when your "counter-arguments" end up making Glenn's points for him?
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Shooter is right
This is America, and nobody should be allowed to redress grievances in a court!
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Just wondering...
...if anybody remembers Malcolm X? Or the threat to world peace of the United Arab Republic under Nasser? Or the "rag heads" during the OPEC embargo of 1973?
Meanwhile, explain our President's attitude toward the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
None of this has ever really been about Muslims, has it? So what is it really about?
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Rock, paper, scissors and why we are losing
In his 2002 book When Religion Becomes Evil, theologian Charles Kimball identifies "five major warning signs of human corruption of religion". These are: 1. Absolute truth claims. 2. Blind obedience. 3. Establishing the "ideal" time (e.g. "end times"). 4. The ends justifies any means. 5. Declaring holy war.
Kimball then goes on methodically to illustrate how both Christians and Muslims are demonstrating each of these qualities in post 9-11 days.
In his introductory paragraphs of Chapter Two of The Assault on Reason, Al Gore illustrates how these hijacked religious values are manipulated today:
The relationship between faith, reason and fear sometimes resembles the children's game of rock, paper, scissors. Fear displaces reason, reason challenges faith, faith overcomes fear.
In stoking fear regarding the capabilities of the opposite side, whether Christian or Muslim, the faith that comes out has tremendously reinforced claims of absolute truth, blind obedience and ends justifying means. Both sides are now in extreme phases of this behavior.
bin Laden is acutely aware of these tendencies and is playing Bush artfully. Al Qaeda lacks the direct weapons to unleash any real damage to the United States, but by playing to our fears, he leads us into a continued occupation of Iraq that serves both to drain our resources to dangerously low levels while simultaneously providing his best possible recruiting tool.
Gore finds a resolution to this conundrum in the words of Thomas Jefferson:
"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion," wrote Thomas Jefferson. "Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because if there be one, He must approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear."
The unblinking reason provided here daily in countering the blathering fear-based authoritarians is our last, best hope out of the disaster Bush and his cronies have put us into. When reason is strengthened, it no longer is displaced by fear.
Saturday, I'll be one of many in Washington in a "Coexist" T-shirt. (http://www.peaceproject.com/wearables/shirts.htm)
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Blaming an entire civilization
There's a radical Jewish settler group that has been plotting and trying for years to blow up the Dome of the Rock mosque in the old city of Jerusalem, the third most holly shrine in islam. Their purpose is to create an armaggedon like religious war that in their twisted view would hasten the coming of the messaiah. I don't see the neocons and the Christifascists tagging the Israelis or all Jews as "Jewfascists" and terrorists because of the views and actions of a few extreme elements.
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Jihadi Fantasies
As you point out violent, fanatical, fundamentalist groups are not the exclusive domain of Islam. There are als substantial groups in Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism. In the past there were even similar groups in Buddhism (and some current Japanese groups may be moving that way).
In America, the greatest threat actually comes from radical Christianist groups. They are responsible for the Murrah Office Building bombing, the Atlanta Olympics bombing, attacks on and assassinations of abortion providers, assassinations of progressive public figures, raids on National Guard armories, bank and armored car robberies, and many other incidents over the last 30 years. This only lists their successfull actions. Over a dozen plots have also been foiled by law enforcement in the last few years. Their activitiesare well documented by Dave Neiwert at Orcinus and the Southrn Poverty Law Center.
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shooter242:
And wouldn't it be ironic if hate-crimes statutes were invoked. You know, the ones that add penalties for wrongful thinking.
You do realize that criminal sentencing statutes at both the federal and state level already allow for enhancement of penalties based on the perpetrator's state of mind and intent? For example, a violent crime committed for revenge purposes will generally carry a higher penalty. Hate crime statutes provide for yet another enhancement to sentences based on the intent to terrorize a specific subgroup or community. It ain't a thought-crime. It's a sentencing modification based on intent, which is a tradition as old as common-law itself.
Thanks Congress, you've provided another reason to be rated lower than even Bush.
As Glenn has previously demonstrated through some straightforward poll analysis, Congress low approval ratings are due to failure to vigorously investigate and resist the White House. But thanks for repeating a thoroughly discredited lie and revealing yourself to be a dissembling rat.
We are fortunate in one respect though, the emigration of basic workers in Europe is Muslim, while here it's Latinos. Geography may save us once again.
Fortunate, how, exactly? That if you have to encounter and interact with people of a different ethnicity, at least they won't be a different religion?
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Sky Gods, Strawmen & Scary Muslims: Monotheism & Its' Discontents
Thanks for this Glenn.
For the past six years, during a wide variety of discussions, I've had countless Islamophobes scream at me that I "just don't get it! THESE PEOPLE mean what they say & they want to kill us! They want to kill YOU!"
I do, quite viscerally, get that though. After decades as a self-declared member of several despised minorities, the collective, theoretic antipathy of violent, fundamentalist strangers neither surprises, frightens or particularly interests me. Familiarity, thankfully, breeds pragmatism about the ability of disapproving, sky-god-loving fanatics to do me the harm they so colourfully threaten. White, right-wing, mostly, but sadly not solely, male or straight, partisans are clearly so unused to the explicit hatred of strangers, it's actually disordered their ability to quantify the actual imminence & factual plausibility of such threats. Hence their urgent, irrational, abject terror about the ability of extreme Islamists to harm them & steal their freedoms. Their subtext sounds something like: "Oh. My. God. How DARE they hate ME!! I'm white, rich, Christian, right-wing & male. Hatred of strangers is totally MY perogative!"
BTW Glenn, I have to thank you for something else as well. Your surprisingly impassioned defense of Andrew Sullivan prompted me to start reading his blog again. His analysis of the Petraeus testimony & the likely nightmarish consequences of a US attack on Iran are among the finest & most insightful I've read anywhere. I still think he's a smug, elitist conservative prat, but I have to admit the plummy bastard can write - impressively, movingly & effectively.