The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Justice and Fair Play

Justice and Fair Play
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Sunday, January 2 2011, 4:43:11 (UTC)
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Now I understand why I seem to defend Islam..it is not because I respect religions, it is because I sympathize with the anger and frustration of Muslims who see their legitimate anger at COLONIALISM turned aside as a mere expression of the violence and the call to jihad and all the other EXCUSES and subterfuges the Christian West gives as the only reason for their rebellion!!! There, Iīm glad I cleared that up because I was begining to feel like I was giving Islam a pass while condemning Christianity for its silly beliefs...

I donīt care WHAT Muslims believe...I donīt care if Muhammad TOLD his people to pluck the eyes out of children..that is NOT the issue...the issue is that the Christian West (and it doesnīt even matter really what religion THEY have) has been using and abusing and robbing and imposing colonies and supporting incredible violence against people, sitting on oil, who HAPPEN to be Muslim (even turning on their own citizens when they denounce the incredible barbarity of their own Western regimes AND Isarel which is nothing more than the attack dog of the West)...and that the legitimate grief and anger and desire for REVENGE, which Americans gave freely as their motivation, is pawned off and deligitimaized as a mere command from Muhammad to behave "like that"...making a legitimate, political rebellion into a command from Allah to "kill infidels".

Iīve been having a blast watching debates between Hitchens against various religious types...and Richard Dawkins too and now Sam Harris...I THOUGHT I would enjoy his lecture but he took a strange turn on Islam.

First let me say that I am no friend to Islam, or any of them. But it is not a desire to excuse or rationalize Muslim beliefs that I take up their defense...an injustice committed towards a Muslim, or anyone else, is hateful because it is an INJUSTICE, regardless of anything else. Thatīs what justice means, it doesnīt mean favoring the people you happen to like, but all people everywhere because of a principle. And Sam Harris in his lecture before a New York ETHICAL society, no less, very soon after his opening comments seemed to concentrate exclusively on Islam as again the worst example he could think of...and why? Same reason as Hitchens, they are AFRAID that Muslims will get their hands on nuclear weapons and so all bets are off, all reason and logic and fairness and justice go out the door, they are mere indulgences when faced with THIS! Itīs the same scare-mongering the Nazis relied upon: things are SO bad and threatening that we MUST change laws and behaviors and even suppress normal human compassion and all the gains made on that tortuous climb up from the mud...we must turn SAVAGE because the threat is so great!


Thatīs what I resent in Hitchensī approach to Islam and the current situation as well. He works himself up to a frenzy of fear which he thinks justifies his violence towards Islam. He gets drunk on fear and uses it as an excuse to attack villages of sleeping people.


But, to get back to Harris...he actually makes the statement that if anyone thinks the rebellion among Muslims has anything to with their actual rebellion today they are WRONG...and then, as if to cinch his point he says the Tibetans, who have suffered much more, though he gives no examples except to say a million have been killed, have NEVER sent suicide bombers against the Chinese....and just what is THAT supposed to show?


First of all Muhammad never said a word about suicide bombing...he did say that people under attack have a right and duty to defend themselves...and Muslims, like everyone ELSE on earth, went out seeking more land and power, in large part to keep themselves from being slaughtered by the Arabs and next the Byzantines. But when, in the last 200 years, have Muslims sent missionaries anywhere or gone out waging wars? Okay, Iīll admit, they did these things 500 years ago...a time when the Christians were as well...but since then, how many countries were conquered in the name of Islam?...how many wars brought to the world by Islam?...how many times have Muslim armies sailed or flew thousands of miles from their borders to attack, convert and steal resources from others? If Islam has always been like that why didnīt they send troops of suicide bombers out 100 years ago to conquer somewhere? Why? Suicide bombing is NOT a tactic of war or conquest...it is an act of desperation when all else is failing..much like the Japanese only resorted to Kamikaze when the end was near and not at the start.


Is Harris praising the Tibetans because they refused or were unable or unwilling to fight the Chinese? What about the American colonists? Would he praise them for NOT having taken on the greatest empire of their day? What if Franklin and Washington had been content to live as Britian dictated...would he be proud of them for that?


This so much explains, now, why Hitchens can be both terribly correct on religions in general while being so WRONG about the threat from Islam. Silly, yes, but a threat, NO, not until the West pushed too far.... it is not Islam that he fears but the result of a downtrodden and abused and humiliated people RISING UP in righteous anger at their oppressors and who, for not having ever cared to build weapons of mass destruction or go out conquering, had not the military means with which to fight back.


The adoption of the suicide bombings, to the extent that they are actually done by the people and not engineered by the West, is their one sure tactic to at least inflict SOME damage in return for the vast amount they have been subjected to and still are..to bring SOME terror to those who have been bombing and terrorizing them for decades, at will, with no one in the world caring a thing about it, because they too stand to profit from the oil.


Is Harris really saying, or does he believe, that if not for Islam there would BE no rebellion? Is he the one making religion the single cause, where Muslims are using their religion only as an INCENTIVE...as a means by which to lend some courage to those who although determined to strike back, are understandably afraid to end their brief mortal lives.


Harris is condemning religion as the cause for behavior he fears and dislikes as much as the Nazis used the Jewish religion as the justification for THEIR hatred and fear, and political expediency and greed.


If it is true that Islam makes the difference between fighting back at oppression or accepting it, in the spirit of the Dali Llama...then I say so much the better for Islam. Has there been a SINGLE Christian nation that followed the example of Tibet? Should the 13 colonies have followed it? Why is Islam being held up to Tibetan standard when it is of the Judeo/Christian/Islamic tradition and family, worlds away from Tibet in every way. Why this desperation, among seemingly intelligent people, to condemn the RELIGION for what Christians have DONE to a people who only happen to be of that religion, or any...and say that the rebellion can NOT be vaild, on its own, because of the RELIGION(again) of its rebels?

If Christianity gave Truman the morals which allowed him, they certainly didnīt stop him, to drop the atom bombs to end the war faster and therefore save at least a million American and Allied lives (as Christians claim), even though thousands of innocent women and children were killed...then why canīt Islam give Muslims the courage to use themseles as human bombs when they have no bombers and atom bombs at their disposal? Isnīt it a sign of Muslim peacefullness that they NEVER developed an arms industry of any kind? Where are their weapons of war, their aircraft carriers their aircraft, rockets, missiles, fragmentation bombs, naplam, guns and rifles and chemicals...where are they? And yet, when they find they are under unceasing attack and can take no more and can only think to sneak in among civillians, because they canīt fly over them, and take their own lives in the attack...we condemn THEM? We say it is their religion that made them do it?

The West consistently downpalys any legitimate grievences that their victims have, while amplifying and exalting all their own complains, which usualy come about because they have been THWARTED in getting ALL they wnat out of helpless people.



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