Resource for The Hesperado

Spencer's rhetorical question about "Islamophobes"

2011-12-01T18:10:00.000-08:00

One example of a rhetorical question Robert Spencer appends routinely and rather frequently to stories reporting Muslims behaving... Islamically:

Concerning Muslims in the Maldives government, Spencer reported:

Islamic Minister Dr Abdul Majeed Abdul Bari told local media that “a tenet of Islam cannot be changed” and flogging was a hudud punishment prescribed in the Quran (24:2) and “revealed down to us from seven heavens.”

Then Spencer wryly asked:

They said it, they cited the same chapter and verse that we have noted many times. Are they Islamophobes?

A deeper analysis of the sociopolitics of the modern West

2011-11-13T11:48:00.001-08:00

The problem reflects two sociopolitical processes that characterize the modern West, increasing with each passing generation into our present:

1) A genuinely beneficent progress (not without faults, since nothing in this life is perfect, right?) unfolding out of the virtues of the Judeo-Christian and Graeco-Roman virtues of Western Civilization

and

2) An increasing influence of Gnosticism in Western culture, with a long history of incremental aggrandizement, beginning in earnest in the 16th century in the wake of the Protestant Reformation; given a jump-start in the 18th century with the Enlightenment; unfolding further throughout the 19th century experimentation and expansion into the new lands of the globe affording further freedom; exploding in the 20th century with actualizations of many of its logical consequences of revolt against the order of the ancien regime -- actualizations causing untold social dislocations, economic turmoil, and mass carnage in a world-wide war catalyzed and exacerbated by mass movements of Gnosticism in Communism, Fascism and Nazism.

Let's back up a bit and lay out schematically the actual complexion of the state of sociopolitics throughout the West in our time, keeping our eye on the ball -- i.e., the primary problem.

Sociopolitics throughout the modern West has been structured by a Left-Right polarity, with a spectrum of positions in between. That spectrum has not been static, but has been at times acquired a dynamic flux, whereby the phrase "the Center (between Left and Right) has shifted to the Left" (or "to the Right") have become commonplace, along with innumerable permutations of "left of center" or "a left-leaning conservative" or "moderate liberal" or "liberal conservative"; etc..

This situation is not absolutely arbitrary and relative, however. Behind this ongoing situation has been a broader, deeper historical process of what might be called "Progress" throughout the West. Many of the features of this Progress may seem Leftish (or "liberal") to many conservatives; and indeed, most of the features of Western Progress are probably accepted, if not eagerly supported, by most Leftists (even if the more radical among them impatiently want faster and more radical progress).

This overarching process of Progress, however, is a sociopolitical phenomenon so broad and deep throughout the West, it becomes increasingly strained to attempt to demonize it as solely the fruit of Leftism corruption and/or darker machinations. There would seem to be, contained in Western civilization itself, the seeds of this Progress as an inherent entelechy unfolding over time, extrapolating the logical consequences of the insights of that civilization's four pillars -- Judaeo-Christian and Graeco-Roman.

Now, that is not to say that this process of unfolding extrapolation has been perfect and uneventfully peachy keen. Like anything in this imperfect life, it has been vulnerable to flaws and defects, emanating out of fallen human nature (I hate it when feel I have to point out painfully elementary truths).

One of the most damaging flaws that has occurred within this process has been the development of modern Gnosticism, which has had disastrous actualizations -- as in Nazism, Fascism and Communism -- as well as broader, less blatantly destructive sociopolitical agendas, typically simply labelled as "Leftism" (with its edgier manifestations being termed "Socialism").

Along with all this, there has been the usual melange of varying degrees of literacy and intelligence with regard to the general flux and structure of the phenomenon. Aside from puerile partisanship reflected in "Left vs. Right" (and vice versa) between obtusely staunch proponents of either side, there is for example the subtler, but no less shallow, misapplication of the term "liberal" as a term of vague condemnation; with attempts to salvage it by many with not much of a firmer grasp of things by recourse to the coinage "classical liberalism".

Interspersed among all this are varying degrees of sociopolitical apolitical apathy, ennui, anomie, quasi-nihilism -- all of which tend, ironically enough, to lean Leftward anyway. We may also notice thrown into the mix the aberrant eccentricity of "Libertarianism" as well as crotchets influenced by Ayn Rand. And, of course, a more serious hobbyhorse, with a potential for more serious consequences, is the vast growth, in varying viral forms, of "conspiracy theory" -- which itself is a kind of amorphous neo-Gnosticism, able to infect hosts on all points of the sociopolitical spectrum, and in the process sometimes finding strange bedfellows among its fellow travelers.

If I had the capacity on this blog to lay out visually a schematic figure, it may make my explanation easier to convey. For now, I'll do my best, by simply adumbrating all the relevant factors:

1. Virtues of Western Civilization founded in its four pillars, Judaeo-Christian and Graeco-Roman.

2. Seeds of "Progress" in #1, and over time unfolding and developing.

3. Perennial imperfections of human nature that impinge on sociopolitical existence.

4. Millennial incubation of Gnosticism from the very beginning of Western Civilization, over the centuries waxing and waning, but mostly kept suppressed until the modern era beginning in the 18th century, with the important catalyzing precursor of the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century.

5. The increasing influence of neo-Gnosticism from the 18th century forward becomes an important part of the dynamism of the ongoing development of Western sociopolitical progress --

a) having seemingly benign effects in such movements as Abolition of slavery, women's suffrage, and other sociopolitical idealisms by which to transfigure society -- if not into, at least toward, utopia -- efforts which may be less simplistically benign but at least not blatantly malevolent (e.g., increasing attempts to help poor and underprivileged through government programs; increasing attempts to translate respect for the Other in various forms of policy; attempts to make society reflect more "fairness" in general; etc.)

b) and manifesting blatantly disastrous and malevolent eruptions in the mass movements of Communism, Fascism and Nazism.

Before we move onto #6, it may be necessary to point out that in 5a, I am not asserting that all relatively benign sociopolitical progress we have seen in modern times is "neo-Gnostic": it is, rather, an inextricable intertwining of the progress latent as seeds in the virtues of Western Civilization with the influences of Gnosticism over the ages. (Whether or not Gnosticism is "alien" to Western Civilization, or a malignant part of it, is another matter which may never be definitively settled.)

6. Meanwhile, the sociopolitical virtue of Western Reason continues to thrive, amid all these challenges and crises that wracked the 20th century. While thriving, it did not necessarily conduct itself impeccably (pace #3 above), and often succumbed to specious degradations of its principles. Nevertheless, proof of its high degree of health is to be found in the spirited and energetic and self-sacrificing rallying of its forces to roundly defeat the outburst of violently virulent forms of formidably deadly Gnosticism in the form of World War 2.

7. While Western Reason won the war (both 20th century wars), its very form of winning in many ways represented a kind of acceleration of the process of Progress -- which, as we noted above, has been the unfolding of intrinsic features of the virtues of Western Civilization. Of course, it should also be noted that there exists, more or less latently, in conservatism a kind of resistance to, and resentment against, the very notion that those virtues even need to be unfolded at all. Thus: "Aren't they good enough by themselves? Why do we have to 'progress' any further? Any of this 'progress' business is really just regress, corruption, decadence -- a falling away from our former pristine Good Old Days handed down from God and from Socrates, respectively." In so many words. Needless to say, we may relocate such an attitude as being simply the silly mirror-image of its evil twin, the unthinking champion of Progress who doesn't really have a clear idea of where he's progressing to, and along with that bases his enthusiasm for progress on a childish demonization of the Bad Old Days when Mean Old White Men oppressed and exploited for their wicked ends all good people.

The truth, as is usually the case, lies somewhere in the middle. And it's in the middle where things get complex and resist the easy reduction.

The reasoning behind why the "War of Ideas" must be through civil persuasion, not Civil War

2011-08-25T00:09:00.001-07:00

The Problem:

Fact #1: The modern West is now (and has been for decades) whitewashing Islam and in the process enabling dangerous Muslims to become more lethal to our societies.

Fact #2: The lethal danger of Muslims pursuing their Islam is metastasizing.

Premise #1: The reason why the modern West is doing this is not because the modern West is a) evil, or b) stupid -- it is because the modern West has developed a worldview over the past half century that reflects an elaborate deformation of good Western virtues, which include respect for the other, and self criticism.

These two virtues are good -- but not when taken to irrational excess, such that our societies end up, with surreal irony in the very name of those virtues, effectively enabling and defending violent and hateful enemies of human rights (i.e., Muslims following Islam) while simultaneously crippling our ability to protect ourselves from them.

Premise #2: Most modern Westerners are relatively good, decent and intelligent people, because the modern West is, relatively, the healthiest collection of polities in all world history -- not just by a slight margin, but stupendously so.

Premise #3: Given our first two premises, the best way to proceed, given our two problems -- the Problem of Islam, and the Problem of Western Myopia to the Problem of Islam -- is through persuasion and education of our fellow Westerners who remain stubbornly stuck in the Box of PC MC.

Conclusion:

Such persuasion and education desperately requires an Anti-Islam Manual as its central guiding template.

"Breivik's Law" quote from Lawrence Auster

2011-08-04T18:07:00.000-07:00

Yet another quote from Lawrence Auster exemplifying "Breivik's Law":

"The passivity and silence of whites as their fellow whites continue to be murdered by nonwhites disgusts me. Do such people deserve to be defended and championed? Do they even deserve to exist? And the answer is that as they are now, they don’t. People who have nothing to say when their own people are being killed have announced that they themselves are willing to be killed. And their enemies recognize this. And that is why the cultural genocide of whites—including all those “random” murders—continues."

Reply to Zenster

2011-06-25T16:11:00.001-07:00

Zenster,

The answer to your question is the doctrine of Anti-Racism, which has become a dominant concern in the West.

This answer by itself, however, can easily be misunderstood, and requires an articulation of related factors.

1) One of those factors is the growth in Western culture of the twin virtues of

a) self-criticism (intended to be constructive, of course)

b) respect for the Other.

2) Another factor is the problem of "painting with a broad brush" -- i.e., of condemning vast numbers of a People with a brush that is deemed to apply only to a small minority among that People. This too is a Western virtue: the earnest attempt to avoid "painting with a broad brush", and it is a good virtue too, as the others are.

Since Muslim number over one billion, are spread out all over the world in a vast diaspora, and appear to be "diverse" (often in a pleasingly and colorfully multicultural sort of way), any criticism (much less condemnation) of specific bad Muslims (however numerously they seem to be pullulating and however widespread around the world that pullulation seems to be), as well as any any criticism (much less condemnation) of the belief system that guides them and enculturates them (however "diverse" that enculturation may be alleged to be) unremarkably runs the risk of committing that thought crime of "painting with a broad brush" all Muslims (and many PC MCs are so sensitive that even a minority of Muslims is not allowed to be criticized, much less condemned -- oftentimes even by mere implication).

There are other factors that figure in the equation (such as the "Islam as a Religion" factor, though that is less important, because were Islam composed of white Westerners, we would not be seeing the broad extent of defense of their beliefs and practices as we in fact see of Muslims who are deemed to be Ethnic and non-Western. I.e., it's not because Islam is a Religion qua Religion that explains PC MC irrationality here; it's the perception by PC MCs that Islam is an Ethnic Religion that makes the crucial difference).

The above two factors I listed, however, in my estimation are the most important to explain what I have called "The Problem of the Problem" (the initial Problem being, of course, Islam; the secondary Problem of it being the West's massive inability to recognize it and then take rational measures to deal with it).

Reply to Sagunto

2011-06-25T15:13:00.000-07:00

Sagunto,

I don't conclude anything about Dutch people or Western people; I surmise what seems the more plausible.

Given three facts --

1. The West sociopolitically is (relatively) free and representative

2. No signs of a statistical representation of a purported majority of people demonstrating their anti-Islam position has appeared yet. If the supposition is a vast majority, that means literally hundreds of millions of Western people from Australia to Canada and everywhere between. A sufficient demonstration reflecting that supposition would entail at the very least a few events numbering no less than one million having occurred long ago, for starters.

3. The West's representatives (in politics, academe, journalism, pop culture, the arts) of its peoples are vastly dominated by PC MC --

-- what does one conclude about the majority of Western people?

If one believes the majority of Western people (if not, indeed, the vast majority) are not PC MC about Islam, one has to adjust the first two facts: thus are trotted out various explanations -- one being a kind of post-modern sociological cynicism about people in general being more orless sheep easily led by the nose; or lazy and virtually paralyzed by inertia and materialistic divertissements; etc. Or, if one wants to retain some respect and dignity for the Common Man, we explain their nearly universal silence on the nefarious power of the Elites who are able to muzzle the Common Man somehow and not let him have his say or influence (and thus the West is crypto-totalitarian, or somehow not yet but nevertheless always approaching it more and more in a having-your-cake-and-eating-it-too way -- as in that glib mantra "our freedoms are being eroded".

Rather than go through all these elaborate maneuvers, I prefer just to look at facts 1-2-3,use the Baron's Occam's Razor, and conclude that most people are PC MC about Islam.

(I do sense that the small minority of Western non-PC MC people is slowly growing, but still at a snail's pace.)

French transcript for Caroline Fourest

2011-01-27T09:14:00.000-08:00

Respecter la Constitution... sauf si elle s'oppose à l'islam!

En théorie, même dans ses cassettes, Ramadan ne voit aucune contradiction entre le fait d'être musulman et français, ou musulman et suisse, etc. (...) «Comme résident de ce pays ou comme citoyen, je respecte la Constitution. C'est un principe islamique (1)» [dit-il].

Mais une précision de taille vient donner un tout autre sens à cette déclaration d'intention. Il précise en effet qu'il faut respecter la Constitution et la loi à partir du moment où «tout ce qui dans ce pays, d'un point de vue social, culturel, économique et légal, ne s'oppose pas à un principe islamique (...) devient islamique (2)».

Ce complément d'information est évidemment décisif. Jusqu'ici, on pouvait comprendre que l'appartenance citoyenne et l'appartenance religieuse n'étaient pas incompatibles, mais l'on se demandait encore qui devait l'emporter en cas de conflit. La réponse de Tariq Ramadan est claire: un musulman respecte les lois d'un pays tant que ce cadre ne s'oppose pas à un principe islamique!

Toujours dans cette cassette, il insiste: «Tout ce qui dans la culture dans laquelle nous vivons ne s'oppose pas à l'islam, on peut le prendre.» Ce qui exclut le reste. (...)

Dans une conférence sur «Notre identité face au contexte: assimilation, intégration ou contribution?», il fait cette proposition à ses coreligionnaires: «Nous sommes d'accord pour l'intégration, mais c'est nous qui allons mettre le contenu.» Or, quel est ce contenu? «J'accepte ces lois tant que ces lois ne m'obligent pas à faire quelque chose contre ma religion (3).»

Prêt à combattre pour défendre l'identité musulmane

Apparemment insatisfait par les cinq piliers de l'islam concernant le culte, Tariq Ramadan y ajoute quatre autres piliers (tous politiques), censés former l'identité musulmane de façon non négociable. La foi: «Pouvoir vivre notre spiritualité et notre pratique complètement.» La compréhension: «Apprendre notre religion.» L'éducation: «Pouvoir transmettre et éduquer nos enfants dans le message.» L'action: «Pouvoir agir au nom de notre foi.»

En apparence, cette proposition paraît anodine. Elle n'a choqué aucun de ses lecteurs voyant en lui un musulman moderne et laïque. Sans doute se montreraient-ils plus curieux s'ils avaient entendu également la version cassette de cette présentation de l'identité musulmane, où Tariq Ramadan précise: «S'il y a une société qui m'enlève un de ces quatre points-là, cette société, je lui résisterai, je la combattrai (1).» (...)

La laïcité à la mode Ramadan

Tariq Ramadan est très clair sur le fait que les musulmans doivent militer pour faire évoluer la laïcité de façon qu'elle coïncide avec leur vision fondamentaliste et politique de l'islam: «L'Etat ne peut pas ne pas tenir compte d'un peuple qui change, donc il faut changer le peuple», explique-t-il dans sa cassette Islam et laïcité (1) (...).

Il est bien question que les musulmans deviennent citoyens pour pouvoir agir sur leur environnement, mais il n'est pas question que cet environnement ou que leur citoyenneté influencent ces musulmans. Ramadan propose d'intégrer tout ce qui est islamique, mais il milite de toutes ses forces pour que la communauté reste étanche à tout ce qui ne l'est pas: «J'intègre le bien au nom de l'universel, je ne me dissous pas, je ne me relativise pas.» A côté de quoi, «je viens avec une pensée globalisante (2)».

L'échange n'est donc possible que dans un seul sens: les musulmans sont priés de ne pas se dissoudre dans les sociétés occidentales, mais de se saisir de leur citoyenneté pour mieux islamiser leur environnement. (...) C'est bien ce qu'il faut entendre lorsqu'il parle de «contribution» musulmane, qu'il présente comme une troisième voie entre intégration et assimilation. Voici très précisément comment il traduit ce concept auprès de ses fidèles: «Il faut s'engager dans tous les domaines qui sont les nôtres où l'on peut amener à changer les choses vers plus d'islam (3).»

De l'obsession de la pudeur à celle de la non-mixité

Derrière un message apparemment serein, Tariq Ramadan se révèle d'une bigoterie surannée, obsédé par la pudeur et par le risque de transgression. (...) Il est d'accord pour qu'un homme et une femme se parlent en public, bien sûr, mais il trouve immoral qu'une femme et un homme non mariés se retrouvent seuls dans une chambre. Il préfère même que l'on évite les poignées de main entre homme et femme, sauf si cela peut être interprété comme un geste intégriste: «Essayez de l'éviter, mais, quand on vous tend la main, vous donnez la main.»

Il mène aussi un vrai combat pour des piscines non mixtes, comme le montre sa colère lors d'une conférence sur les «grands péchés» tenue à la Réunion: «Aujourd'hui, les piscines, à l'île de la Réunion, ne sont pas islamiques! Certains hommes y vont quand même en disant: «Mais moi je protège ce que je dois protéger»; mais qu'est-ce que tu regardes à la piscine: tu peux pas y aller parce que ton regard est posé sur des choses que tu ne dois pas voir! Parce que tu vas là-bas et forcément ça t'attire! Donc il faut développer des lieux où c'est sain, où l'on aura des piscines tout en respectant nos principes éthiques (1).»

Le voile comme étendard

Dans ses cassettes sur La Femme musulmane face à son devoir d'engagement (1), il encourage vivement les femmes à ne pas se laisser intimider, à mettre le voile et même à porter plainte si on leur refuse ce droit: «Il faut aussi se faire entendre par la législation, se faire entendre par le droit, et faire en sorte d'être respecté par rapport à ça.» Il ajoute qu'il n'est pas question de céder devant l'adversité, par peur d'avoir des «problèmes avec les collègues» ou «à l'école». Tout en rendant hommage aux filles qui font preuve de ce «courage», il demande à la communauté musulmane de les épauler: «Il faut une communauté qui les soutienne.» (...)

En général, Tariq Ramadan et son frère ne sont jamais loin lorsqu'une affaire de voile éclate dans la presse. Le prédicateur [Tariq Ramadan] explique volontiers aux musulmans comment justifier ce choix pour faire en sorte que les choses changent et que le voile soit de plus en plus répandu et accepté: «Plus on sera présent, plus des femmes avec leur hidjab seront présentes, sur le plan social, présentes dans la discussion, expliquant leur démarche, expliquant qui elles sont (...), plus on habituera les mentalités, et plus les choses changeront (2).»

«Eduquer nos enfants dans le message»

Dans les actes du Colloque international des musulmans de l'espace francophone, rédigés sous la houlette de Ramadan en 2001, parmi les recommandations stratégiques adressées par le comité de pilotage qu'il préside, on peut lire que «l'éducation est un domaine où les stratégies doivent être très exigeantes». Les musulmans francophones sont incités à «veiller au contrôle des programmes scolaires et empêcher de véhiculer des valeurs non conformes à nos principes», à «promouvoir les structures intégrant le cursus officiel et l'éducation islamique, qu'elle soit déclarée ou non» et, enfin, à «investir l'école publique en utilisant les espaces libres pour dispenser un enseignement religieux complémentaire».

(...) Dans ses cassettes, non content de prôner un enseignement complémentaire antidote à la théorie de l'évolution, Ramadan encourage très clairement les jeunes filles à ne pas participer à toutes les activités sportives: «Il n'est pas permis aux femmes de faire du sport dans des conditions qui dévoilent leurs corps aux hommes (1).»

Indulgence sémantique envers les intégristes

Autant [Tariq Ramadan] critique ouvertement les musulmans libéraux, autant il n'emploie jamais de terme critique envers les intégristes musulmans. On désigne par «intégristes» ou «islamistes» ceux qui instrumentalisent le religieux à des fins politiques liberticides. Or Ramadan n'utilise jamais ce terme pour parler des islamistes. Tant qu'ils sont proches des Frères musulmans, les théologiens ou les militants les plus radicaux - de Youssef al-Qaradhawi à Sayyid Qotb, en passant par Banna - ne sont jamais désignés autrement que par des termes flatteurs tels que «musulmans politiques» ou «savants». Une façon de nier leur intégrisme qui échappe à ceux ne sachant pas faire la différence entre musulman et islamiste.

Moratoire pour la lapidation

au grand jour lorsqu'il s'est contenté de proposer un «moratoire» pour mettre un terme à la lapidation pour adultère lors de l'émission 100 Minutes pour convaincre. Cette proposition n'est pas seulement indécente et conservatrice, elle constitue un retour en arrière par rapport aux avancées enregistrées par le Coran lui-même.

En effet, comme Jésus avant lui («Que celui qui n'a jamais péché lui jette la première pierre!»), Mahomet avait souhaité mettre fin à ce châtiment indigne. Aïcha, sa deuxième femme, fut accusée à tort d'avoir été adultère et il ne voulait pas que ce type d'injustice puisse se reproduire. (...) Il faut bien comprendre ce qu'entend Tariq Ramadan par «moratoire». Il parle d'un exercice de délibération (choura) devant se dérouler non pas entre citoyens mais entre savants. Or Tariq Ramadan reconnaît comme savants uniquement des théologiens proches des Frères, c'est-à-dire intégristes. (...) Or que signifie proposer un moratoire entre savants islamistes, majoritairement favorables à la lapidation, si ce n'est proposer un moratoire ne pouvant qu'aboutir au maintien de la lapidation!

S'il désapprouvait réellement le GIA, Ramadan ne serait pas ami avec le seul homme ayant osé écrire que le massacre de Tibéhirine était fondé coraniquement parlant... Yahya Michot. En 1997, ce Belge converti à l'islam s'est fait connaître pour avoir exhumé une fatwa d'Ibn Taymiyya prouvant que le meurtre des moines était justifié du point de vue religieux! (...) Peu de réformistes non jihadistes s'affichent à ses côtés depuis.

Tariq Ramadan, lui, fait toujours partie de ses amis. En mars 2002, le prédicateur a même rédigé la préface de son dernier ouvrage, un livre édité par Jeunesse sans frontières. Bien sûr, le livre en question ne porte pas sur Tibéhirine. Il s'agit d'un ouvrage intitulé Musulman en Europe mais la caution apportée par Ramadan à Michot est un signal fort envoyé à tous les jeunes islamistes au fait de ce type de débats (1). (...) Ramadan recommande Yahya Michot comme «un frère et un ami». Il ne cesse de vanter ses mérites et le présente comme l' «un des rares penseurs musulmans qui savent l'élégance de l'humour généreux et digne».

Dans ce cas... Ramadan prend tout de même soin d'assurer ses arrières par cette phrase sans aucune portée, mais dont il pourra toujours se targuer: «Plus d'une fois nous n'avons point été d'accord, souvent nous nous sommes confrontés.» Sur quoi? Les jeunes qui liront ce livre ne le sauront pas.

Double discours

Il [Tariq Ramadan] assume volontiers son école de pensée lorsqu'il se produit devant un public «ami», mais évite soigneusement de la mettre en avant devant un public potentiellement critique. Interviewé par Beur FM en novembre 2003, il reconnaît appartenir au réformisme salafiste: «Il y a la tendance réformiste rationaliste et la tendance salafi, au sens où le salafi essaie de rester fidèle aux fondements. Je suis de cette tendance-là, c'est-à-dire qu'il y a un certain nombre de principes qui sont pour moi fondamentaux, que je ne veux pas trahir en tant que musulman (1).»

On ne saurait être plus clair. Si Tariq Ramadan est bien réformiste, c'est uniquement en tant que «salafiste», c'est-à-dire en tant que fondamentaliste (le mot arabe salaf signifiant «nos pieux ancêtres»). Autant le terme «réforme» indique bien sa volonté de renouveler la compréhension de l'islam, autant l'adjectif «salafiste» nous renseigne sur l'orientation souhaitée par ce changement, en l'occurrence une lecture passéiste et non progressiste. (...)

Le 25 février 2004, moins de quatre mois après son interview sur Beur FM, [Tariq Ramadan] tiendra un tout autre discours lors d'un colloque organisé à l'Unesco. Mis en difficulté par Ghaleb Bencheikh, connu pour représenter le courant réformiste libéral, il a retourné la salle en accusant son contradicteur de lui faire un faux procès: «Je ne suis pas salafiste! "Salafi" signifie littéraliste. Je ne suis pas littéraliste.» (...) Joli tour de passe-passe en vérité. Tariq Ramadan est pris en flagrant délit de double discours. «Salaf» évoque les fondements et non le littéralisme.

Et Tariq Ramadan est bien salafiste, même s'il n'est pas littéraliste. Il conseille effectivement aux musulmans d'être fidèles à l'esprit des textes et non à leur formulation exacte - «Ce qui est absolu, ce n'est pas la lettre mais c'est le principe (2)» - mais il considère néanmoins toute recommandation énoncée au VIIe siècle, dans un contexte historique bien particulier, comme étant «une parole éternelle dans son principe». Si bien que son salafisme non littéraliste reste une invitation à refuser de moderniser ou d'adapter des principes datant du VIIe siècle.

Virtuose de la rhétorique

Depuis quinze ans qu'il s'exerce à parler tour à tour devant un public d'islamistes ultraradicaux comme devant un public de militants laïques ultrasceptiques, Tariq Ramadan est devenu un virtuose du désamorçage rhétorique et sémantique. Un art qu'il enseigne à ses fidèles, à qui il explique la nécessité d'une «stratégie de communication» pour établir des «sphères de collaboration»: «On a effectivement énormément de gens qui sont prêts, des intellectuels, des penseurs, des gens sur le plan social, qui seront sur la même ligne de résistance avec nous à une seule condition, c'est que nous développions la communication (1).»

Afin d'être plus efficaces, il invite les musulmans à s'adapter en fonction de leurs publics cibles et donc à bien les connaître: «Je dois développer un discours à la mesure de l'oreille qui l'écoute (2).» (...)

Tariq Ramadan a dirigé - et en grande partie rédigé - un petit précis sur «la compréhension, la terminologie, le discours» destiné aux musulmans francophones. On peut y lire que l'objectif premier de ce travail consiste à «avoir un discours fidèle à nos références» tout en étant «compris». Un passage précise: «La fidélité à nos principes reste prioritaire.»

Edité par les éditions Tawhid, cet opuscule sert d'actes au Colloque international des musulmans de l'espace francophone qui s'est tenu à Abidjan du 4 au 6 août 2000. Ramadan y animait un atelier de redéfinition sémantique sur les mots «droit, rationalité, démocratie et communauté». Pour chaque terme, le livre explique comment ce mot peut être compris par les Occidentaux, en quoi il pose problème aux musulmans, et propose une «formulation de concept» qui ressemble fort à une redéfinition propre à troubler ses interlocuteurs. On retrouve ainsi toutes les astuces sémantiques du prédicateur. Le mot «rationalité», par exemple, n'est plus synonyme d'esprit critique issu des Lumières, mais d'un «cheminement intellectuel permettant de redécouvrir la foi».

Un exemple parmi d'autres. En fait, pour chaque mot clef sur lequel il se sait attendu, Ramadan a développé une seconde définition - à laquelle ont accès ceux qui ont suivi ses cours oraux ou lu ses livres les plus confidentiels. Ce qui lui permet de tenir un discours apparemment inoffensif tout en restant fidèle à un message éminemment islamiste sans avoir nécessairement besoin de mentir ouvertement, en tout cas pas à ses yeux.

L'art du mensonge...

En octobre 2001, un mois après les attentats du 11 septembre, le journal [Lyon Mag] brise un tabou et pose la question que tout le monde cherche à esquiver: «Faut-il avoir peur des réseaux islamistes à Lyon?» Le résultat de l'enquête est redoutable pour Ramadan, qui apparaît dans toute son ambiguïté. C'est le premier article réellement susceptible de le dévoiler. C'est aussi la première fois que le prédicateur décide d'attaquer devant un tribunal. Mais Lyon Mag ne se laisse pas intimider. En janvier 2002, la rédaction choisit d'étayer son propos en interviewant Antoine Sfeir, qui confirme leur intuition. Sfeir parle d'un «orateur habile» et d'un «fondamentaliste charmeur», «spécialiste du double langage». (...)

Ramadan peut difficilement accuser Antoine Sfeir d'être raciste sans se ridiculiser. (...) Il entame donc un second procès. Les deux affaires, celle contre Lyon Mag et celle contre Sfeir, sont jointes. (...) Le journal Lyon Mag est condamné pour ne pas avoir usé de suffisamment de précautions, ce qui est un classique, mais Sfeir est reconnu comme ayant tenu des propos conformes à une certaine vérité. Le verdict est très dur pour Ramadan. Dans son jugement du 22 mai 2003, la cour d'appel de Lyon estime que les discours de prédicateurs comme Tariq Ramadan «peuvent exercer une influence sur les jeunes islamistes et constituer un facteur incitatif pouvant les conduire à rejoindre les partisans d'actions violentes».

Voilà qui porte un sacré coup au plaignant. Pourtant Ramadan trouvera le moyen de minimiser la casse. (...) Il fait croire qu'il a gagné contre Sfeir en mélangeant les deux plaintes, celle contre le directeur des Cahiers de l'Orient et celle contre Lyon Mag. Ce qui lui permet d'affirmer sur les plateaux de télévision qu'il a gagné ses procès contre tous ceux qui l'accusent de tenir un double discours, comme lors de l'émission Campus du 4 décembre 2003. Ce jour-là, il est repris par Guillaume Durand: «Vous avez perdu votre procès contre Antoine Sfeir...» Mais Ramadan persiste et ment: «Non, j'ai gagné mon procès contre Antoine Sfeir.»

Etablir des «sphères de collaboration»

Dans ses cassettes, [Ramadan] encourage ouvertement ses partisans à tisser des alliances: «J'aimerais que vous vous rendiez compte que nous ne sommes pas seuls à relever le défi de la résistance à l'occidentalisation sans âme et sans conscience. (...) L'avenir est bien à cette double réflexion intelligente: répertorier les sphères de résistance et développer les sphères de collaboration. (...) On ne doit pas se mettre seul contre tous (1).» On pourrait croire que Ramadan invite surtout les musulmans à devenir les alliés des non-musulmans face à la mondialisation.

Sauf que nous savons ce qu'entend Tariq Ramadan par résister à l'occidentalisation: non pas une autre mondialisation, mais un «face-à-face des civilisations» qui verra triompher l'islam politique. Voici ce qu'il explique dans ses cassettes à ses partisans: (...) «Qu'est-ce qu'a dit Huntington? Il a dit: les pouvoirs occidentaux doivent chercher dans les pays musulmans ceux qui défendent leur idéologie. C'est-à-dire qu'on va chercher dans les pays musulmans, les musulmans dits «libéraux», ou les musulmans dits «laïques». Les musulmans sans l'islam, quoi!

(...) Eh bien nous, ceux avec lesquels on va collaborer, c'est exactement le contraire. On va aller en Occident chercher et collaborer avec tous les êtres qui défendent le droit, la justice et la dignité des hommes. On va développer ces ponts, on va être présent sur le champ du dialogue académique et social. (...) Donc nous sommes contre la philosophie du conflit mais nous sommes pour la philosophie de la résistance dans la collaboration (2).» Peut-on être plus clair?

Source:

http://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/societe/religion/extraits-exclusifs_488295.html

Transcript from the Jihad Watch thread that documents my latest banning from Jihad Watch, September 25, 2010

2010-09-26T07:51:00.000-07:00

Hesperado replied to comment from Fineliving56 | September 25, 2010 8:15 AM | Reply

Re: Fineliving56's fulmination against the Muslims in the video -- e.g.:

ANIMALS……ANIMALS……ANIMALS ….
THEY ARE THE DOG Sh#@*T that stuck on the bottom of a shoe … .they are pig sh#@*t that coming out of it's a@#*ss ……I absolutely despise , detest , loathe ,and hate the blackest hate ever all directed to these filth ...

I understand Fineliving56's emotion, but something has happened to me over the years of reviewing the mountain of ghastly ghoulish gruesome shit that Muslims have been churning out just in the last decade (of which this one video is but one instance out of literally thousands), let alone the last fourteen centuries: I feel no emotion about Muslims any longer -- no anger, no hatred. I suppose that is because anger and hatred is pertinent only against other humans whenever they might anger one, or make one hate them. Id est, Muslims have abdicated their humanity in my eyes. All I care about now is how to protect myself and my society from them. (This is not an ontological abdication: any Muslim may regain his humanity by abjuring Islam, the Koran, Mohammed and Allah, and by proving they have done so.)

I'm sorry. I have given up on Muslims. They have simply done too much horrific evil, and the ones who apparently are not sawing off heads, sawing off clitorises, torturing people, exploding in order to mass-murder, etc. ad bottomless nauseam, are countenancing and enabling those unspeakable evils and then adding insult to injury by tap-dancing and evading and tu-quoquing whenever we dare to condemn the "religion" they continue follow.

Any reader (or editor or writer) here who has not similarly given up on Muslims has simply not been really truly fully digesting the data churned out at this Mountain of Horror called Jihad Watch over the years. Even Fineliving56's anger does not go far enough, and betrays a misplaced sentiment that misconstrues our enemy. At a pack of hyenas surrounding our farmhouse endangering our family, for example, or at a hurricane threatening to destroy our town, or at an army of robots, no one of us would feel "anger" or "hatred": we would only know they pose a danger, and we would try to stop them from killing us. That should be our sole concern. Fulminating in anger is as useless with regard to the danger Muslims pose as is sentimentality and hope. Only steely determined pragmatism, focused like a laser on the one thing that matters -- the safety and preservation of our societies -- is relevant.

I do, however, feel anger, hatred, loathing and positive fury -- at my fellow Westerners who continue to bend over backwards and salaam forwards in order to "respect" and defend Muslims. There, those negative emotions are pertinent, because their objects remain human, even if they exhibit some of the more unfortunate characteristics of human ineptitude and obtuseness and grievously misplaced conscience.

duh_swami | September 25, 2010 8:40 AM | Reply

Fineliving56 Is an apostate living in the US...I know her from another site...She is a good woman...

Swengen replied to comment from Buraq | September 25, 2010 9:24 AM | Reply

Thanks you Buraq for at least trying to set Hakeem in the right direction. The mentality of some of these animals that can lay judgment on others is amazing. The Jesus that Muhammad added to the Quran was strictly add on verbage from a profit that was more out for himself than inspired by any angel. How people buy into this speaks volumes.

zonie kafir | September 25, 2010 9:54 AM | Reply

which seem harsh, or "barbaric" to you outside observers.....

A bit. Huh?

And to hakeem. Not all Christians subscribe to the concept of the Trinity. What about them? Are they shirkers too? The Trinity is a mystical concept and not logical. But all religion contains illogic so what's yer point? Or do you not think it illogical that mohametan beliefs include the Virgin Birth or the idea that Jesus returns at some future date, as in from the "other side"? Or in the case of the Shia, that a hidden person will pop out of the well after being in there for 1000 years? Sure sure dude. That's totally logical.

And what exactly is the sound of One Hand Clapping? Religion is faith and not logic. Allah has 99 attributes. Does that define allah completely? If not please define allah precisely so that we may have a logical discussion. Oh can't be defined by us mortals eh? Well then logic does not apply to things which can not be defined.

nabi ZK (pbum)

Fineliving56 replied to comment from traeh | September 25, 2010 10:06 AM | Reply

to Hesperardo ….
Like Duh said I am ax Muslim living in US for the last 30 years who suffered from living in a household crushed under the un forgiveness of Islam and the complications of it …I joined the conversations in anti Islam sits this year to vent, no one around me understand or care to listen ,I am surrounded by two faced mild muslims who understand 9/11 like Ahmahiyjad did in the UN just recently .

When I sow that video of stoning I revolted ,I cried, I cussed,I went around the house in circles like a mad woman in reaction even my family tried to console me and tried to say it is only isolated incidents which only got me more angry …..I now it does not help to get angry …but I have the feeling that I am going through the time that you went through before and may be I will get to the point of mild reaction to the horror of Islam like you do now .

I normally do not cuss like that ..I apologies ….thank you Duh for understanding .

gravenimage replied to comment from hakeem | September 25, 2010 10:26 AM | Reply

"hakeem" wrote, believing he was replying to a comment from Traeh:

As I predicted, "hakeen" was not referring to the Jesus of the Bible at all, but to the ugly Islamic figure of "Isa". "Isa's" main role in the Qur'an is to castigate Christians for "associating partners with Allah" by believing in his divinity.

well i respect your opinion and at the same time i agree with you in sum aspect and i disagree with you in sum.

firstly...
.....................

Actually, that was my comment, not Treah's. It can be difficult, at times, in a long comment stream, to be sure who wrote what, and who is commenting on something written by someone else. Easy mistake, and one I have made many times myself.

As a rule, as an act of courtesy, I try to reply to anyone who has addressed a post of mine at some length. I will not do so here.

"hakeem" seems under the impression that I have an interest in calmly debating the differences between Christian and Muslim views of the the trinity, or the role of Mary, or some other fine point of theology—and that I would wish to do so with *an apologist for dragging a woman into a field, throwing her into a hole, and stoning her to death*.

I have no such interests.

Just as Robert Spencer will often use "do you condemn Hamas?" as a litmus test, I believe *stoning* is even more basic.

Many things about Shari'ah law are disturbing—the terrible enshrined oppression of Infidels, and women, and children, the prosperity-killing tenets of "Shari'ah-compliant finance", the arbitrary nature with which it is all enforced—but these can seem subtle or vague to many Infidels, who find it difficult to imagine the repercussions of something as seemingly minor as the allowance of "Islamic family law" in cases of custody or divorce or inheritance.

So here is the baseline litmus test: are you a Muslim who condones a victim being dragged into a field, buried up to her waist, and *stoned to death* by a ravening mob?

If the answer is yes, then the person is no longer to be considered a moral actor. The person is not someone one would wish to discuss minor theological matters with—or, indeed, any matters at all.

It would be like having a civilized conversation about politics or art with a cannibal or an especially brutal SS concentration camp guard.

Along with the appalling "Dank", who also wants "Allah" to "Bless America" with the savagery of stoning, "hakeem" has put himself beyond the pale. One does not have discussions with such a person. one can only regard him with abject horror—and realize how many of his co-religionists are just like him—outwardly seemingly rational, while at heart a companion to those men in the field holding bloodied stones in their hands.

sean | September 25, 2010 11:13 AM | Reply

Human sacrifice is an integral part of the Cult of the Damned.

Denise | September 25, 2010 11:17 AM | Reply

muslims caught on tape - again. Here we have more revolting reveals about the "religion of peace". islam is more the religion of serial killers. Criminal behavior like this is par for the course where evil islam & company are concerned. Yeah this was a very hard video to watch, and it's shocking that this type of barbaric injustice is still being practiced today. One would expect to see this sort of heinous act carved out on the inside of a cave, not caught on modern day video tape. Nope, this is going on today, folks. Hard to believe, but true.

traeh | September 25, 2010 11:18 AM | Reply

The risk of talking to someone who supports something morally disastrous like Islam, is that one can give undeserved prestige to that point of view and that prestige can have destructive ramifications. But it is possible to dialogue with Muslims in a kind way without covering any of the ugly truth. The advantage of dialoging in that way is that some Muslims do learn, though it may take years of continuous drip of argument on the stone. And mainstream infidels are more likely to be open to the ugly truth if it is wrapped in kindness. If all we do is point out the ugliness, that's an important service, but it's not enough, and it won't be the most effective path for us. A positive alternative should be presented for Muslims along with unvarnished criticism, even if the positive alternative is only implicit in the kindness one shows.

Those who, like Hesperado, say we should spare no feelings whatsoever for Muslims -- but I encourage people to read his comment above, in case I've misread it -- those like Hesperado perhaps do not consider Father Boutros, who dialogues via his television show with Muslims all the time, and quite possibly has converted more Muslims away from Islam than anyone else on the planet. He does not cover up the uglyness of the hadiths and Koran. But he is kind. I think that as long as one does not cover up any of the uglyness of Muhammad and Islam, kindness is the most effective way to make inroads against Islam. Boutros is proof, unless the reports are incorrect of huge numbers of conversions away from Islam, due to Boutros. I gather there is a multi-million dollar price tag on Boutros head.

zonie kafir | September 25, 2010 11:36 AM | Reply

graven. Thank you. How correct. The nabi lost his head there for a moment and tried to engage with a knuckle dragging supporter of the vile mohametan act depicted in the video. There is no point. You are correct.

nabi ZK (pbum)

Eastview | September 25, 2010 11:47 AM | Reply

"Christianity claims to be a monotheistic religion. Monotheism, however, has as its fundamental belief that God is One; the Christian doctrine of the Trinity - God being Three-in-One - is seen by Islam as a form of polytheism. Christians don't revere just One God, they revere three." -- hakeem

To the extent that this is supposed to represent the Islamic understanding of the Trinity, it illustrates about as well as anything a mindset that attaches literal meaning to words but fails to perceive the underlying concepts. It is the mind of one who reads a poem about the beauty of a forest but misses the point by getting hung up on the poet's description of the leaves of a particular tree. Or one who fixates on the wild hair of the conductor of the symphonic orchestra and fails to hear the music. Or of one who will view a painting and see only dabs of paint. It is the mind of one who reads the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) but fails to detect the underlying meaning. It is a mind which does not understand the power of symbolism, analogy, similes, or allegories, not to mention satire, sarcasm or parody, to capture concepts that the simple stringing together of simple words like "See Spot run" alone cannot. It is the mind of a child.

But as regarding the Trinity, even as a child I learned an analogy that, as much as anything, helped me understand this central concept of Christianity.

There are several different interpretations, all of which rely on analogy to illustrate. In one, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit represent three aspects of a single reality comprising, respectively, the physical world, sentient but unillumined man born into the physical world, and the transcendent spirit of man. In another one, more akin to Buddhism or Hinduism, the three elements are the ultimate Universal Reality, creation of the physical world out of that reality, and the self-organization out of that physical world a sentience able to reflect on itself and perceive the Ultimate Reality from which it sprang. There are others, but an analogy applicable to all of them is how water (H2O) can manifest itself in three separate phases, solid ice, liquid water and steam, and still be of the same substance.

Note that this is an analogy, so to understand how it attempts to capture the Three-in-One concept of the Trinity requires a mind capable of detecting the connections, making the necessary links, and understanding the analogy at a conceptual level. The Islamic conception of the Christian Trinity completely misses the subtlety of the real concept, and is akin to a child asserting that water exists only in liquid form because it had never seen snow or ice, or realized that steam is also water.

B | September 25, 2010 11:48 AM | Reply

Dank said "Adultery SPECIFICALLY is seen as a heinous crime because it is an attack against the family unit, which is the nucleus of any society. It is only in a society that holds the right of an individual to do whatever they want with impunity over the welfare of the society as a whole that such reasoning would be seen as barbaric."
--------------------------------
But yet the Quran considers Islam to be above the Family nucleus. It consorts its followers to tattle on even brothers or other family members if they stray from Islam. Isn't this hypocrisy in a religion that considers the family the nucleus? I guess the family is only the nucleus up till the point you stray from Islam at which point Islam supersedes even your own family. How cohesive is the family going to be in an atmosphere like this? This kind of behavior is very CULT like.

In a culture and religion that considers all women to be property of one male or another, does not allow women to discover their "true love" or have their own self identity (the burqas and other obtuse identity erasing mechanisms), allows the male to have 3 other wives or even a child bride. Then wouldn't you think there are far more incidents of adultery that go unnoticed or unfounded? Who the hell would want to be in a family where you are just one of three females getting attention, loving and sex from the one male in the household? Many western women would be repulsed at the idea.

It is human nature for someone to want to be loved. Most people want to be in a relationship where they are appreciated, loved and given a voice to let others know what they feel or think. When this voice is silenced, they seek out through other means.

Acharya Sanning | September 25, 2010 11:57 AM | Reply

Someone has rightly called this hideous savagery "Muslim human sacrifice." Or, to coddle the more sensitive, "Islamist human sacrifice."

What do you expect when you are dealing with low-IQ inbred savages? Google "muslim inbreeding," and you will discover that some 70% of Pakistanis are inbred. Pakistanis in Great Britain are overwhelming the medical system with their first-cousin marriage offspring with birth defects. These children often have lower IQs. And, as we can see from this vile video, THESE Muslims are savages. They may or may not be Pakistanis, but I wager that a similar percentage of Afghans are likewise inbred.

So, there you have it in a nutshell: Low-IQ inbred savages engaging in human sacrifice. That's the best Islam can produce in these parts.

To the person who calls himself "Buraq," you have inspired this image:

http://freethoughtnation.com/contributing-writers/63-acharya-s/406-buraq-obama

My numerous liberal friends are not at all fond of the image, despite that fact it's just art and satire. (Not to mention a little truth, especially in consideration of Obama's obsequious bowing to the king of Saudi Arabia and his unending Islam-smooching commentary.)

Hesperado replied to comment from Fineliving56 | September 25, 2010 12:03 PM | Reply

FineLiving56, I certainly think your reaction to this video is better than those who find it unremarkable or worse yet those who cannot see the Islam behind it. But I think there is one more step to take beyond anger.

Indeed, we can list on a scale all the possible reactions and rank them, from Worst to Best (as the numbers rise, they get better and better):

Worst: Islamic defense of stoning and support for the stoners of the video.

2: Disapproval of the stoning -- but identification of the stoners as motivated by "culture" and having nothing to do with Islam.

3: Disapproval of the stoning -- and grudging acceptance of something vaguely resembling Islam in the stoning, but only of the "tiny minority of extremists who are hijacking peaceful Islam" variety.

4: Repugnance and dismay at the stoning, and a growing sense that there is something seriously wrong with Islam -- but not with Muslims since, of course, most Muslims are still ordinary "moms and pops like the rest of us just trying to live daily life" and nice people.

5: Horror and repulsion at the stoning, with a redoubled sense that Islam is thoroughly evil -- but still, there are many nice Muslims out there who are either "secularized" or who are "ignorant" of their own faith.

6: Outrage and fury at the stoning (the reaction of FineLiving56) and for all things Islamic -- but... does there still linger here an unconditional granting of humanity to Muslims? As I claimed in my previous comment, to be angry at such Muslims is to implicitly expect that they could do otherwise. (And then we have the problem of all the Muslims around the world who are not stoning anyone: what do we think about them? That some/many/most of them are ordinary "moms and pops like the rest of us just trying to live daily life" and nice people?)

Best: I no longer feel anything about Muslims -- because I have had the epiphany that they are not human. It would be irrational to get angry at an inhuman maelstrom of evil, would it not? One simply seeks ways to protect oneself, and one's loved ones, from that maelstrom.

(As I said in my previous comment, this is not an ontological judgment, but a pragmatic one: any given Muslim may reclaim and earn his humanity by abjuring Islam/Mohammed/Allah/the Koran -- though he should remain suspect even after that.)

duh_swami replied to comment from Fineliving56 | September 25, 2010 12:27 PM | Reply

This is a good site to vent the truth...people are listening...keep posting... :)

Tommo | September 25, 2010 12:32 PM | Reply

There's nothing like a good stoning before breakfast to raise feelings of lust for women. These animals have to seen to be believed. Is it really 2010, obviously it's still AD900 in Pakistan. They could do with some modern camera equipment out there so we could send crystal clear images for re-transmission on the BBC News channel.

Hesperado replied to comment from Courreges W | September 25, 2010 12:40 PM | Reply

"Wilde never wrote about Islam or Muslims."

Perhaps true; but Wilde at least got close, with his play Salomé -- about Herod, a petty king of the Middle East Before, During and After Christ whose father was an Edomite, and whose mother was an Arab.

Herod, according to the book of Matthew of the New Testament, had all the babies of Bethlehem massacred, out of some obsessive anxiety that there was one baby among them considered to be teh "King of the Jews" and the "Christ".

Also according to the New Testament (Matthew and Mark), Herod was seduced by his step-daughter's belly-dancing to grant her wish to have John the Baptist beheaded.

In Oscar Wilde's play Salomé, we find the titular character saying to a Syrian who has a crush on her:

I look at you through muslin veils...

And later, Hérodias, her mother, reproaches Herod thusly:

...thy father was a camel driver! He was a thief and a robber to boot!

Tommo replied to comment from Eastview | September 25, 2010 12:51 PM | Reply

Jehovah Witnesses also have trouble with the subtlety of the Holy Trinity as well as the Christian emblem of the cross. Hindus on the other hand revere the many and varied natures of a single god with a vast array of colourful and imaginative depictions of his moods, desires and power. Surely of all the ancient religions Hinduism must be the closest to Christianity.

B | September 25, 2010 12:59 PM | Reply

"Muslim do have the tendency in being selective when being vocal about history...They can remember ancient text in the Bible about stonings, but seem to forget that Israel has always been Jewish land..."

It is even historical fact in the Quran, that Jews lived in what is now known as Saudi Arabia. Muslims deny this and seek to keep even "people of the book" out of their "holy land".

Such hypocrisy

Eastview replied to comment from Hesperado | September 25, 2010 1:15 PM | Reply

"...Oscar Wilde's play Salomé..." and the quotes.

Excellent catch, Hesp!

B replied to comment from Steffen Larsen | September 25, 2010 1:16 PM | Reply

Someone mentioned Dante?

Dante's Hell, Mohammad depicted

Depictions of Mohammad in this vein are why they wanted to burn down this one church that had Dante's Hell painted within.
-----------------------

"A cask by losing centre-piece or cant
Was never shattered so, as I saw one
Rent from the chin to where one breaketh wind.

Between his legs were hanging down his entrails;
His heart was visible, and the dismal sack
That maketh excrement of what is eaten.

While I was all absorbed in seeing him,
He looked at me, and opened with his hands
His bosom, saying: "See now how I rend me;

How mutilated, see, is Mahomet;

Hesperado replied to comment from traeh | September 25, 2010 1:24 PM | Reply

...kindness is the most effective way to make inroads against Islam.

Kindness was not an option against the Japanese during WW2 -- the Japanese who had, in the years before WW2, massacred millions of Chinese, Koreans and other SE Asian (over 100,000 Filipinos); and who attacked us, who had designs to conquer us because they thought themselves superior, and who allied themselves with Hitler.

I'm not done yet. One more thing to consider: In terms of evil and dangerous fanaticism & hostility to the world, Muslims are worse than the Japanese were.

B replied to comment from Hesperado | September 25, 2010 1:35 PM | Reply

Hesperado,

One thing to keep in mind with the point that "kindness is the most effective way to make inroads against Islam.".

If you remember the Son of Hamas, Mosab Hassan Yousef? he was imprisoned in Israeli jail cell after having been caught doing something. While there he saw the distinction between the Israeli Jailers who handled the prisoners with kindness vs his own people (hamas) who abused and killed his own people in the jail cells. It was this that made him turn on his own people and religion so that he became a "spy" for Mossad. He also turned away from terror and violence and became a Christian.

So yes, we should seek to encourage kindness towards Muslims in the hopes that they see by our examples the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is true that some may be a lost cause. In this case, there is not much more that can be done for them.

Courreges W replied to comment from dumbledoresarmy | September 25, 2010 2:07 PM | Reply

Actually, the real quote is "A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal." - Oscar Wilde

Someone in our current Islam-saturated age thought substituting "Islam" for "sincerity" would work - and yes, it certainly does!

Wilde never wrote about Islam or Muslims. The real quote from Wilde is:

"A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal." - Oscar Wilde

Courreges W replied to comment from Hesperado | September 25, 2010 2:21 PM | Reply

That's fine about Wilde's play, "Salome," the two sentences.

However, his witty quotation (among many) is:

"A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal." - Oscar Wilde

Someone substituted "Islam" for "sincerity" on the 'net, which is what leevy saw.

So, two lines in "Salome." That's it about Muslims for Wilde.

Wilde satirized Victorian English society, as in "The Importance of Being Earnest," and "Lady Windermere's Fan."

Courreges W replied to comment from Hesperado | September 25, 2010 2:45 PM | Reply

"I no longer feel anything about Muslims -- because I have had the epiphany that they are not human."

Of course they're human. Which is why we feel for the Muslim woman being stoned by her countrymen - she's human. She's not an alien from Planet Zorg - she's a human on Earth. Amina and Sarah Said, Muslim girls' murdered by their warped-by-Islam father - they were human. So is their evil father. Perverted by an evil ideology. Human, nonetheless.

Fascists' and Nazis' are human, too - they've been warped by an evil ideology, just as Muslims' have.

But, they're human. So, your "epiphany" is completely bogus.

demsci replied to comment from Hesperado | September 25, 2010 3:14 PM | Reply

Small correction, Hesperado,

The Herod who was supposed to have the babies in Bethlehem killed, was Herod the Great (living # 70 to 4 BC), ruler of the whole of Palestine (then called Judea/ Samaria/ Galilee and Edom and then some extra) as a Roman vassal. And he hardly could have had all those babies killed at the time of Jesus'Birth, as he was supposed to be dead 4 years already then. But that's another discussion.

Herod was the son of Antipater, some Edomite "general" under the Jewish king Hyrcanus, ally of the Romans.

The Herod of the play, the husband of Herodias and mother of Salome, was Herod the Greats son Herod Antipas, vassal-ruler of only Galilee, so yes, HE was petty.

demsci replied to comment from demsci | September 25, 2010 3:20 PM | Reply

Cprrection Herod Antipas was of course husband to Herodias and SHE was mother of Salome.

herman.steve@att.net | September 25, 2010 3:23 PM | Reply

The MOST DANGEROUS Muslim

EVERY Muslim fits into one of the 3 below categories

a) The Muslim. This is the law-abiding, very decent fellow. May be varying degrees of pious, the more pious, the more he/she writes off the innumeralbe kill verses in the Koran, emphasizing its early moral verses in an effort to ascribe to a more modernistic interpretation - in any event all religions seem to have a few kill verses. Or may not give a rat's behind about any of it. In any case, zero interest in installing Sharia because it would make little no difference to their lives or too apathetic to care. Can be a very congenial fellow, friend to members of other religions.

This Muslim is every bit as horrified and repulsed by the video as anyone posting on this board.

b) The political Muslim. Is committed to overthrowing the government and installing Sharia by making use of Muhammed's prescrited edict to lie to the infidels. There is ABSOLUTELY no difference discernable to a non-Muslim between a Muslim of type "a" and a Muslim of type "b". In lying to infidels, the political Muslim will blend in perfectly with the Muslim of type "a" above.

c) The military Muslim. This is the frothing, brainless mass pictured in the video. This mass reverberates the KILL in the instruction book in every automatated, spasmoidic movement, in every impulse springing from its gonads to its appendages.

Thie is what needs to be understood.

The MOST DANGEROUS Muslim..the one that will stare you in the face while eating your children -

is "a" above.

Littlenan | September 25, 2010 4:23 PM | Reply

What a cowardly bunch of pigs these "men" are. What an awful religion that demands such cruelty.

wakingwest replied to comment from Hesperado | September 25, 2010 5:45 PM | Reply

Individuals who so horrifically violate such basic forms of human decency and who subject their victims to such outrageous cruelty are void of the one distinguishing characteristic unique to our species and that is having conscience.
So I agree with Hesperado and his frank and sober assessment. Converting muslims is a noble cause and if done in significant numbers, it holds the potential perhaps of reversing the trend but at this point in time,to rely on this happening, is folly. The tide against us is immense and approaching too fast, it is time firstly to ensure our own survival.

Thomas_h replied to comment from B | September 25, 2010 5:57 PM | Reply

".. we should seek to encourage kindness towards Muslims in the hopes that they see by our examples the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Yes, my friend, do seek whatever you think is good to seek, just please refrain from the "WE SHOULD" form.

We know what we should seek. Namely, we seek to fulfill our natural duty to ensure safe and free world for our children, grandchildren and their descendants by restoring a muzzlem-free West.
On the basis of what 1400 years taught us about Islam it has at least as much chance to make muzzlums embrace the Gospel of Jesus Christ as kindness.

wakingwest replied to comment from Courreges W | September 25, 2010 6:03 PM | Reply

Personally I choose not to define as human any callous unrepentant murderer or any one subscribing to the same ideology no matter how mildly or moderately loyal they claim to support it, it is still support. It is always the seemingly innocuous fruits which hide the pestilence creating the plague we all need to quarantine.

Thomas_h replied to comment from Thomas_h | September 25, 2010 6:15 PM | Reply

Which doesn't mean we need to be unfair to muzzlems in our everyday encounters. I try to be correct, but never more than that so they never have reason to think that I like, or welcome them.

Thomas_h replied to comment from wakingwest | September 25, 2010 6:27 PM | Reply

I think the best definition of human advanced by Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas etc., and, I think, never challenged is (potentially)rational animal. Unrepentant murderer may be a moral monster, but he is rational nevertheless.

traeh replied to comment from Hesperado | September 25, 2010 7:13 PM | Reply

Hesperado,
Soldiers can kill with utmost effectiveness and yet still feel a little compassion for the enemy, though that might be difficult sometimes. Kindness does not preclude doing what is necessary to defend oneself. I doubt that fiercely fighting the Japanese required abandoning all compassion for them. But maybe I'm not being realistic.

There seems no doubt that in many past wars, American soldiers were encouraged to dehumanize the enemy. Doing that is so common among fighting forces everywhere that maybe one must assume it is a psychological necessity for an effective fighting force.

But I don't think that's obvious. And I'll bet some of the most effective soldiers have had some compassion for the enemy. In fact Americans are perhaps an example of that: Americans surely dehumanized their enemies less than did the Nazis or the Imperial Japanese, but we beat them both.

No doubt a certain kind of compassion can be foolish and paralyzing -- the kind of compassion that extends primarily to the bad guy, while paying little attention to his victims. I don't see why one cannot have compassion for both the bad guy and his victims, and in light of that, kill the bad guy when necessary, but without hatred or joy.

I have to admit that perhaps if I were more closely a witness to some of the horrors done in the name of Islam, I might find the notion of any compassion toward the perpetrators ridiculous or even monstrous.

Still, there is that line from Terence (the writer of Latin comedies in the 2nd century B.C.). The line is also inscribed on Montaigne's library ceiling: "I am a human being, and nothing human is foreign to me."

Since we all have a dark side, perhaps many of us could have become as spiritually corrupt as an Islamic supremacist, if we had been born into an Islamic setting. There but for the grace of...X, go I.

Probably more than one approach to these matters is advisable anyway. Different approaches can accomplish different things, many of them necessary. By analogy, a traditional father's approach might be, say, admirably tough and realistic, but not always particularly understanding. A traditional mother's approach might be quite loving, but, shall we say, too understanding. Such polarities can balance one another not just outwardly, but within each individual. That might even be a decent definition of sanity.

As for social sanity, we have some modicum of it because people check and balance each other, at least in free societies.

gravenimage replied to comment from zonie kafir | September 25, 2010 7:32 PM | Reply

Thank you for your kind words, Nabi.

wakingwest replied to comment from Thomas_h | September 25, 2010 7:47 PM | Reply

Sometimes the sage's wisdom comes not from the extent of what he knows but from realizing the infinity of what he knows not.
While it is impressive to cover one's opinion by casually alluding to the greats such as Plato and to many of the other notable philosophical giants of the past,I will dare to bare myself naked ,boils and all to cpmprehaned the truth of what I really am and not appearing vain.
As great as Greek civilization was remeber that philosophical knowledge or not, it crumbled despite what Plato learned form Socrates of whom he was his boy toy.
Sophistry is capable of convincing idiots the rationality of drinking urine, it's what is now called spin and at this point venturing into a discussion of the definition of what rational means and much less adding animal to it is not only beyond my ability to copy and paste or remember philosophy 101 but most importantly time-wise unaffordable.

B replied to comment from traeh | September 25, 2010 8:58 PM | Reply

Soldiers can kill with utmost effectiveness and yet still feel a little compassion for the enemy, though that might be difficult sometimes. Kindness does not preclude doing what is necessary to defend oneself.

This is quite correct. I think fighting forces need to do what is necessary to fight the enemy and win. When the enemy has been subdued, we need to reign in our compulsion to humiliate and antagonized. In other words, at this point we should be the model of our society and treat the prisoners as we would want to be treated if we were in their shoes.

When I saw the pictures and actions from Abu Gharab prison (sp?) I was horrified that our own forces were doing stuff like that. It certainly gave credence to Muslims that we were immoral and inhuman. Many of the Muslims that may have been sitting on the fence or against fighting Americans became pissed off enough to do something about it. It was an unnecessary provocation from our own fighting forces. We should treat them with respect and kindness that we would hope for from them. Follow the Geneva Conventions and who knows maybe they will come to see their religion for what it truly is, despicable.

Susanp | September 25, 2010 8:59 PM | Reply

To the loathsome Dank: You defend Sharia and its barbaric punishments as deterrents to protect society and the 'family', and you sneered that we ignorant rednecks are too obtuse to appreciate the subtle genius of these savage practices. This ignorant redneck appreciates individual liberty but islam is all about the collective, the tribe, the ummah, the SUPERIOR MALE. You call the family the backbone of every society and I agree, the family is very important to every society but the islamic family is an aberration, a freak, a farce designed to provide the MALE husband with sexual variety. The islamic 'family' is a dysfunctional nightmare and is largely responsible for stagnated, impoverished islamic societies, radicalized young males, and neurotic, miserable women. Polygamous societies create the chaos and fanaticism seen in Pakistan and other islamic backwaters. The islamic family is not worth preserving or defending and that isn't why women accused of adultery are stoned. They are stoned for dishonoring their male owners and their tribes because they are chattel, easily replaced and totally dispensable. They are stoned in public to show 'society' what happens to errant slaves and because the male executioners enjoy inflicting pain and suffering on evil females.

To Hesperado: I have often questioned the humanity of muslims myself. They lack certain basic characteristics found in most human beings, although anatomically they are human. There is more to being human than outward appearance and muslims are missing something crucial on the inside---love, compassion, empathy, the ability to discern good from evil? I have heard it said that 'human nature is universal' but muslims blew that theory to hell. Civilized human beings with a conscience and average IQ could not believe and practice the filth and perversions found in islam and consider these abominations the epitome of piety, the word and will of God, nor could they revere muhammad as a prophet and the 'perfect human'. Islam is evil any way you look at it; it has no redemptive qualities. But I think the most ironic aspect of islam/muslims is their certitude that they are superior because they believe this demonic heresy! The only thing extraordinary or unique about islam is its ability to inexorably brainwash people and turn many of them into homicidal drones for allah.

dumbledoresarmy replied to comment from Fineliving56 | September 25, 2010 9:52 PM | Reply

Fineliving

you identify yourself as an apostate from Islam.

If that really is the truth, then: may you be blessed and protected.

Have you thought of getting in touch with 'Former Muslims United'?

Marisol replied to comment from Hesperado | September 25, 2010 9:56 PM | Reply

I have had the epiphany that they are not human. - Hesperado

Joint decision between Robert and me: this is enough. There are two issues here, Hesperado: your role as longtime sideline sniper, and posts like this that make you sound like a sociopath, playing into the hands of CAIR. Really, you're getting into Goebbels' territory here.

If what you've "adumbrated" above is the criterion for Approval by Hesperado, we're not buying.

That brings us to the great Office Space question: "What would you say... you do here?"

You have your own blog. Go "be the change you want to see in the world" there.

B | September 25, 2010 10:56 PM | Reply

Marisol said "Joint decision between Robert and me: this is enough. There are two issues here, Hesperado: your role as longtime sideline sniper, and posts like this that make you sound like a sociopath, playing into the hands of CAIR. Really, you're getting into Goebbels' territory here."

I agree and I think anyone lurking these boards or posting need to learn what Taqiyya means and how to spot it being used among Muslims. This will make you more assured of your dealings with Muslims and less afraid to engage Muslims in your own personal life.

The goal with sites like Jihad Watch is to educate people about Islam, specifically the dangerous portions of Islam. Are all Muslims dangerous? No. Learning to recognize a Muslim who could be a valuable partner in the community and learning to trust them (but understanding Taqiyya and knowing what to watch for) is advantageous for all of us.

Many Muslims in the American community have acted as informants to let Law enforcements know when something is going wrong or when Jihadists are present in the community or Mosque. They wouldn't be doing this if they felt like they were going to be stabbed in the back by us. When some people on this board make a blanket statement about "Muslims" without first identifying which Muslims you are referring to, I cringe. If you are doing this, you need to continue to educate yourself about Islam and Muslims. The information provided on Jihad Watch is there for a reason. Use it.

I am against Jihadists Muslims or Islamic Supremacists. These are the people who embrace the violent parts of Islam and follow Jihad in all its variant forms (both peaceful and violent). I am not against peaceful Muslims who simply want to live and provide for their families. I am friends with many of them, and more specifically know many Iranians. Their wish is to practice religious Islam but not the political. Some Muslims I know are only Muslims in name only (MINO, if you will.)

So please be careful on this distinction about Muslims.

venkat | September 25, 2010 11:17 PM | Reply

Its not about which religion is better its about self introspection. Iam an hindu and i know there were several evil practices in my religion mostly abrogated but some still exist even now. i as a civilised human being identify those practices and deplore them. i neverdefend them just because its my religion whereas i know most muslims always defend their religion as if their life depends on it.Why cant we just call spade a spade. is that religion so worthy? worth more than human lives? islam and muslims have lost their souls and believe me its not in their quran.

wakingwest replied to comment from B | September 25, 2010 11:26 PM | Reply

Amongst your lecture to those you may believe are the less knowing you state; "This will make you more assured of your dealings with Muslims and less afraid to engage Muslims in your own personal life."
Are you kidding, you are missing then essence of the problem and worse your tact or lack of mirrors the obama approach.
At least when Hesperado happens to have a dissenting view, worng or not, he substantiates his opinion and one can only hope more of us could poses his logical skills to consrtuct his viewpoint.
You also state as an axiom of universal law the following opinion "Are all Muslims dangerous? No"
The next time someone here goes to the trouble of presenting to you the contrary opinion please jump in an disprove them point by point. I'll be all ears.
the last thing I'll quote from you is the following warning, al imam rouf"So please be careful on this distinction about Muslims."
Since when has anyone here have to be careful offending muslims?

henry | September 26, 2010 12:30 AM | Reply

People everywhere are frightened to tell the truth about Muslims - they are as human as anybody; however, they follow a book that sanctions cold blooded murder, and even rewards it. But we cannot burn Muslims because they are so very close to being cured of their attachment to a deeply flawed bible called the Koran - why is it flawed? Simply because it justifies murder. I know you would burn Hitlers book because of the many psychotic things it says. But the Koran is ten times as murderous as Hitlers best seller. So, why hypocritically say you are against book burning big time but in the interest of free speech it should go unpunished except for harsh scoldings leveled against those people who would dare to do such an unpopular thing? It is very good to burn the Koran, and very bad to scold those who do bravely burn this book that justifies and rewards out and out murder! They are heroes, and what they do will, in the long run, save many lives. We only have one enemy here, and that is the Mighty Koran, the enemy of all freedom, even the freedom to live an innocent life.

B replied to comment from wakingwest | September 26, 2010 1:25 AM | Reply

For people who makes a blanket statement like "f*** all muslims, they deserve (whatever punishment that person thinks of) are the ones I'm trying to address. Be more reasoned about who you are targeting in the Muslim community. Not all Muslims are Jihadists. To those Muslims we need to get their support in either reforming Islam or abandon it.

Do you want to identify the enemy and deal with them? Or are you just going to tell all Muslims to f*** off and leave the US?

Brian Richard Allen | September 26, 2010 1:48 AM | Reply

Let's not kid ourselves that our culture is other than immeasurably superior to that of these psychopathologically-hesperophobic bloody barbarians or that short of their mass conversion to Christianity, Muslims in any numbers, colonies and/or ghettos are assimilable into Judeo-Christian/Western/Human Civilization.

For every minute of the past 1400 years and culminating in the atrocities of September 11 2001 and in that week's Islamics' dancing in their streets and souks and alleys, we have been taught everything we will ever need to learn about Islam. We will allow ourselves to be convinced otherwise only at deadly risk to our nation and to the very civilization that, without us, has neither vanguard nor guard -- nor any chance of survival -- nor of independent life.

Brian Richard Allen replied to comment from B | September 26, 2010 2:00 AM | Reply

B replied to comment from wakingwest

.... Not (every Muslim is a) Jihadist ....

Wrong.

By the explicit directive of the Muslims' false fuhrer's Mein Kampf, every Muslim is.

But -- to be perfectly fair -- not all jihadists are psychopathologically-hesperophobic gutlessly-cowardly mass murderers.

Only about one hundred and fifty million of the evil bastards fit that description.

demsci replied to comment from B | September 26, 2010 3:14 AM | Reply

Hello B,

My distinction inside the Ummah, the Muslim commonwealth, would NOT be moderate or radical, but Democratic or Theocratic.

I mean, the PCMC-people keep assuring the world that Muslims by and large are no threat and mean us and our Democratic system no harm. But that only the radical Muslims do that.

I like to take them up on that and find out, point by point when Democracy and Islam contradict, which side Muslims take.

Hell, even if they take up Theocratic positions openly, that at least shows honesty and clarity, instead of them constantly trying to shut down investigation, information, knowledge and patient dialoque. When people are justifiable very suspicious because of Theocratic holy texts and declarations of Islamic leading people and followers alike.

I in this stage do not think we have any use for those Muslims who claim to be moderate but who are really in essence still allied to Supremacists/ Theocrats more than with us/ Democracy-loyalists.

Although I do understand that the whole Islam-Democracy-controverse is complex and that there is much I do not know or understand. That's why I am in favor of huge informed dialoque and clarity given by Democrats and Muslims alike.

So let us, Democracy-loyalists, ask them Questions, Muslims in Democratic countries, in a way they can't avoid real choices.

R_not | September 26, 2010 3:33 AM | Reply

Take note that no moslem country goes to the help of moslems under the Taliban - or when Saddam was in power - or now with Ahmadinejad, etc. Not one.

No moslem country stops their zakat from going to Saudi Arabia who sends part of it to fund their violent jihadists.

No moslem country does anything to stop the violence or what is behind the violence.

And moslems DO NOTHING to stop it from their cushy couches in the West.

Dalaran replied to comment from Dank | September 26, 2010 3:59 AM | Reply

Dank - Frankly, any time anyone talks about "family values" as a way of stifling the individual, I want to barf on their shoes.

The fundie xtian version is bad enough - you're not a family unless you have a pack of snot-nosed children running around. Given how much trouble kids can get you into, it's amazing anyone even wants to have anything to do with the things any more.

Yours is even worse, though. If that vid is an example of Islamic family values in action, then I say down with the family completely, the concept isn't even worth that shit.

Dalaran | September 26, 2010 4:09 AM | Reply

Oh, and Dank, about your sub-IQ woman - if she committed a capital crime in the US, it means she committed murder. It shouldn't matter how smart or dumb someone is, if they commit murder.

When a dog mauls someone, do they stop to consider its assumed low-IQ before they kill it? No, they don't. In fact, it's precisely because the dog is seen as having a low IQ that it IS killed. Having a low IQ means to people that rehabilitation is not possible.

Me, on the other hand, I think vicious dogs are far more rehabilitable than most humans, especially Muslims.

And again, take your family values and shove them down a deep dark hole where the sun doesn't shine - preferably your own anus.

Dalaran replied to comment from Courreges W | September 26, 2010 4:29 AM | Reply

I don't think he means "human" in the genetic sense. I think he means more along the lines of "person" in the legal sense.

Not all persons are humans - corporations can be persons, too. There was a case in Germany a while ago, where a zoo that was shutting down was suing for personhood for a chimp, for rehoming reasons, but I don't know how that went. The chimp and his advocates most likely lost, unfortunately.

As not all persons have to be human, the converse can be true, too - a human needn't necessarly be considered a person.

And yeah, I would be all for classing chimps, gorillas, and orangs as persons, and removing Muslims from that class.

herman.steve@att.net | September 26, 2010 5:15 AM | Reply

Learn about Islam so that one can differentiate....

There never was this differentiation among other threats. No good Nazis. No good Ku Klux Klan members. The assumption was the contract was clear to both those inside and outside the organization.

In learning about Islam, one finds out about Islam. That Mahammed was a guy who thought of not one insight into the human condition. He was a base example of a human speciman - thief, pervert, sex hedonist, liar, and ESPECIALLY murderer and power-over-others pursuer. And also a blatant fraud as the root story is a corrupted plagiarism of the Talmud and Bible, and the "revelations" coordinate perfectly in Mahammed's capacity to pursue these vices.

In other words, once a rational person studies Islam, the contract becomes clear.

Most(?) Muslims are not in on the contract, ie, are good Muslims. I suppose that's an accurate statement, as one would stay with the religion one was borne into without compelling reasons to exit. There is absolutely no way to tell a good Muslim from a bad Muslim who is perfectly aware of the contract.

However these good Muslims serve a vile person.

They are the jungle providing cover and refuse.

They are the thermostat keeping the temperature acceleration gradual enough to keep the frog in the pan.

Dalaran replied to comment from Susanp | September 26, 2010 5:17 AM | Reply

Well, the nature of humanity is universal - you just have to know what "universal" values to look for.

Islam celebrates what I consider to be the "natural human" - the natural human being nothing more than a killer ape.

This is why I distinguish between "human" (a strictly biological term), and "person". A person is one who has raised himself up from natural humanity.

So the question isn't "are Muslims human"* but rather, "must they continue to be considered persons"?

*Considering the genetic defects running through Muslim society due to inbreeding, that would be an open case for a biologist or taxonomist. I'm not even fully convinced, from a strictly biological point of view, that someone with human parents who was born with too many or few chromosomes can be considered "human", in the biological sense. But we do anyway, because our psychology requires taxonomic pigeonholing of that sort (even in creatures that are downright confusing, such as wolves, coyotes, and dogs, which are considered different species, but can and do freely interbreed, and should really be considered "races" of one species) and PC/MC won't even let biologists recognize and investigate racial differences in the same way we would investigate breed or subspecies differences in other creatures.

Muhammad by Jackson Pollock

2010-05-20T09:37:00.000-07:00

An old refutation of Darwin

2010-04-30T10:47:00.000-07:00

The following refutation of Darwin was published in 1861 in a journal called The Theological and Literary Journal (the citation details are reproduced at the very end). It is a specific refutation of Darwin's famous classic, On the Origin of the Species, published near the end of 1859. Unfortunately, I cannot seem to locate the author of this refutation from the on-line journal in which it is found.

In my estimation, this refutation is superb. Aside from some Christian sermonizing here and there that is tangential at best to the substance of the dispute, the refutation meticulously re-presents each claim and argument by Darwin, then articulates counter-arguments for them -- counter-arguments that to me are persuasive.

The challenge for modern Evolution Theory proponents with specific regard to this refutation would be two-fold:

1) Articulate counter-arguments to the counter-arguments in this refutation;

and,

2) if the claim will be made that Evolution Theory has, in the intervening century and a half since Darwin wrote, evolved (pun intended) such that this refutation, or any aspects of it, are no longer relevant, then articulate arguments that demonstrate and defend this claim.

This refutation is very long, and some may say, long-winded; but I have adjudged its length to be necessary for its arguments to be rendered cogent. For one thing, the anonymous author has the good habit of quoting extensively from the object of his refutation, and then addressing every point in the quotations. For another, although he may seem often to be repeating himself, the anonymous author is laying subtly distinct layers down one by one that form necessary interlocking parts to his arguments.

At any rate, here is the text from the refutation. I have excized considerable portions from it that are in my judgment peripheral to the arguments. Readers who wish to read the complete text can access it through the link noted in the first paragraph above. Even so, I have not yet closely combed through to detect peripheral text that may yet remain. I will continue to edit this refutation, even while it remains published here on my blog, and I shall do my best to find further text that needs to be excized, or typos that require correction, if they exist.

An 1861 Refutation of Darwin's book, On the Origin of the Species

. . .this great characteristic of the living natures of our world has been exemplified in all their history to the present time. They consist, now, of the same four great classes as at first; those that have their origin and life in the waters; those that have wings and fly in the air; those that creep and walk the land; and man, who bears the image of God and has dominion over the earth, and all its other inhabitants. And the distinctive natures of these four classes have been, and are, wholly incommunicable to one another. Each only produces creatures of its own kind. No other beings ever spring from the union of human beings but human beings, and human beings of identically the same distinctive nature as their parents. No other animals ever spring from four-footed beasts of the same kind but four-footed beasts of that kind; none from reptiles but reptiles; none from insects but insects; none from the inhabitants of the waters, but inhabitants of the waters; none from the fowls of the air, but fowls of the air. And this great law holds equally of all the great families into which those great classes of the animal world arc divided. The whale gives birth only to the whale; the shark only propagates sharks; the crocodile, crocodiles; the herring, herrings, and so throughout. No instance is known, of any one of the innumerable orders that people the waters, giving birth to progeny that are not of identically the same nature as themselves.

And so, also, of the birds of the air. The eggs of the eagle never yield any other young than eagles; the eggs of the ostrich never any other than ostriches; the brood of the condor are condors; of the heron, herons; of the peacock, peacocks; and the thrush, the nightingale, the jay, the robin, the wren, the humming-bird, only yield progeny of their own several natures.

So also of the inhabitants of the land. The elephant never pairs with any but its own kind, and never yields any other progeny than elephants; and so of the camel, the giraffe, the lion, the buffalo, the deer, the ox, the sheep, the bog : nor does the horse and the ass, when pairing with their own kind, ever give birth to offspring except of their own identical nature.

This law thus holds universally that creatures of the same kind give birth only to offspring of their own distinctive nature. The law holds, also, almost absolutely, that creatures of different kinds never unite and propagate; and . . . exceptions, of which the horse and the ass are the chief, yield a mixed progeny that cannot perpetuate itself. And this is verified not only by the observation and convictions of men generally of the present time, but of all past ages. All the laws which men have ever instituted for their government, whatever may have been the age or the nation in which they had their origin, have contemplated man as identically the same being in nature, sustaining essentially the same relations, owing much the same duties, exposed to the same temptations, and liable to the same physical evils. All historians have drawn precisely the same picture of his mind and his body, his passions and his actions, his enjoyments and his miseries, his life and his death. Moses, David, Solomon, Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, the Greek and Latin orators and dramatists, painted him as exactly the same being as he is now. The sculptures and drawings of the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Egyptians, and the statues and paintings of the Greeks and Romans exhibit him as of identically the same form, size, acts, and expression as in the present age.

The descriptions also in the Pentateuch, and other most ancient parts of the Hebrew Scriptures, of the animals appointed for sacrifice, and others, as the horse, the ass, the camel, the lion, the bear, the fox, the hart, the eagle, the raven, the owl, exhibit them as of the same nature as those that now bear the same names; and the animals described by Aristotle are exactly the same in nature as those bearing the same names that now inhabit the land and sea of Greece and Asia Minor; and those depicted by Virgil and Pliny, the same as those of the present day, that inherit their name.

This constancy of animals to the nature of their progenitors, this undeviating transmission by them of their distinctive peculiarities unaltered to their offspring, observed and acted upon hy mankind of all generations, has been recognised and held by naturalists generally, to be the law of their being. It is the faith, our author admits, with but two or three exceptions, of the whole body of eminent men who have made it a subject of special study.

Mr. Darwin, however, denies it. He believes in no such constancy in the nature either of animals or plants. He maintains that none of the living creatures or vegetables that now inhabit the earth have even essentially the same natures as the originals from which they are descended. Instead of being, by the law of descent, identically what their originals were by the creative fiat that gave them being, he holds that they owe their distinctive peculiarities to a gradual modification of those primary natures by casual and perpetually varying second causes. Thus he says:—

" Although much remains obscure, and will long remain obscure, I can entertain no doubt, after the most deliberate study and dispassionate judgment of which I am capable, that the view which most naturalists entertain, and which I formerly entertained, namely, that each species has been independently created, is erroneous. I am fully convinced that species are not immutable ; but that those belonging to what are called the same genera, are lineal descendants of some other, and generally extinct species, in the same manner as the acknowledged varieties of any one species. Furthermore, I am convinced that natural selection has been the main but not exclusive means of modification."—P. 13.

" It may be asked how far I extend the doctrine of the modification of species. The question is difficult to answer, because, the more distinct the forms are which we may consider, by so much the arguments fall away in force. But some arguments of the greatest weight extend very far. All the members of whole classes can be connected together by chains of affinities, and all can be classified on the same principle, in groups subordinate to groups. Fossil remains sometimes tend to fill up very wide intervals between existing orders. Organs in a rudimentary condition plainly show that an early progenitor had the organ in a fully developed state; and this in some instances necessarily implies an enormous amount of modification in the descendants. Throughout whole classes various structures are formed on the same pattern, and at an embryonic age the species closely resemble each other. Therefore I cannot doubt that the theory of descent with modification embraces all the members of the same class. I believe that animals have descended from at most only four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number.

" Analogy would lead me one step further, namely, to the belief that all animals and plants have descended from some one prototype. But an analogy may be a deceitful guide. Nevertheless, all living things have much in common, in their chemical composition, their germinal vesicles, their cellular structure, and their laws of growth and reproduction. We see this even in so trifling a circumstance as that the same poison often similarly affects plants and animals ; or that the poison secreted by the gall-fly produces monstrous growths on the wild rose, or oak-tree. Therefore I should infer from analogy, that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from Some One Primordial Form, into which life was first breathed."—Pp. 418,419.

He thus holds that not a single species of the organized beings that now inhabit the earth has the nature of the original from which it has descended ; and that most have but a very slight touch of it. If all animals descended from but four or five progenitors, the modifications through which they have passed must have extended to all the essential elements of their bodily and psychical natures. Their instincts, their appetites, their passions, must have undergone as great changes as their organization and their mode of life. How radical he holds their transmutations have heen, is seen from his intimation that the horse may be a modification of the tapir, or the tapir of the horse, or that perhaps both may have descended from a common parent of a still different nature; and his avowal that he can believe that the whale was wrought by natural selection from a bear. "In North America the black bear was seen by Hearne swimming for hours with widely open mouth, thus catching, like a whale, insects in the water. Even in so extreme a case as this, if the supply of insects were constant, and if better adapted competition did not already exist in the country, I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger months, till a creature wax produced as monstrous as a whale."—P. 165.

Man has, of course, on Mr. Darwin's theory, been the subject of these modifications in common with all other living creatures, and descended therefore from a progenitor essentially unlike himself; and perhaps a being without reason; a quadruped, a reptile, a fish, a bird, no one can tell what; and under the influence of the same causes is destined to assume, in a future age, a nature as unlike his present, as this is unlike the unknown original from which he drew his being.

. . .

Has Mr. Darwin then verified his theory? Has he invested it in any considerable measure with an air of truth ? Has he furnished an array of facts and arguments that seem to support it to such a degree as to shield it from the discredit of an unscientific, wild, and atheistic dream ? In our judgment he has not. It is highly pretentious. It is artful, it is bold—and at times defiant; hut it has no solid basis. It begs what it affects to prove. It is at war with the most indisputable and essential facts, and it is confuted at every stage by its own admissions and reasonings.

Thus he builds his whole system on a gratuitous and most improbable postulate; namely, the existence of one or more creatures of whose being he has no evidence, and whose nature he is wholly unable to determine. In admitting that he cannot tell how many original forms there were from which all present animal races have descended, he admits that he has no knowledge that any one of the four or five he supposes there may have been, ever existed: and in maintaining that whether five, four, or less, they were essentially unlike those now in life, he admits that he has no knowledge what their distinctive characters were—whether those of insects, fish, birds, beasts, man, or part, or all of them united. His originals of the present races are, therefore, mere hypothetical beings. He not only cannot prove that they ever had a place in the world ; he cannot even tell what they were! But it is wholly unscientific thus to build a system on a mere supposititious basis. It is attempting to account for the stability of the earth by placing it on the back of a turtle; while the turtle itself is left without anything to stand on. Mr. Darwin cannot argue back from the present races of living creatures to any antecedents as progenitors, but such as he can show have really existed and had certain distinctive natures. When he reaches the last in the upward series that he can identify and characterize, he has exhausted the materials on which he can reason and build a system. His whole theory thus, at the first critical touch, crumbles into dust.

Next, the postulate on which he builds his first argument, —namely : that variations from the distinctive type arise in individuals of a species that gradually advance to such an extent as to erase from the subjects of it the features of that type, and constitute a new species—is assumed without authority and against fact. He says,

" We have many slight differences, which may be called individual differences, such as are known frequently to appear in the offspring from the same parents, or which may be presumed to have thus arisen, from being frequently observed in the individuals of the same species inhabiting the same confined locality. No one supposes that all the individuals of the same species are cast in the very same mould. These individual differences are highly important for us, as they afford materials for natural selection to accumulate, in the same manner as man can accumulate, in any given direction, individual differences in his domesticated productions. These individual differences generally affect what naturalists consider unimportant parts; but I could show, by a long catalogue of facts, that parts that must be called important, whether viewed under a physiological or classificatory point of view, sometimes vary in the individuals of the same species. I am convinced that the most experienced naturalist would be surprised at the number of the cases of variability even in important parts of structure, which he could collect on good authority, as I have collected during a course of years."—P. 47.

The point, however, to be proved, is not that variations may and do take place and in important parts of structure, but such variations as naturally remove the subjects or inheritors of them from the species to which their progenitors belonged, and convert their acquired peculiarity into a new species; and that he does not prove. He only affirms that slight individual differences appear in offspring of the same parents. Nor could he prove it; first, because no differences that change, or lay a foundation for a change of the distinctive characteristics of their species ever arise in offspring of the same parents that are of the same species. Only three kinds of difference appear in such offspring. 1st. Defects or monstrosities; but they being injurious, he excludes from the class he contemplates; which he holds are uniformly beneficial. 2d. Variations that do not affect the distinctive characteristics or qualities of those in whom they appear; such as a greater or less size, weight, agility, and other attributes or qualities that are in some degree common to all who belong to the species. Such diversities are plainly unessential, and are no ground for the formation of a new species. To suppose them a natural and adequate basis for new species, would be to suppose that there may be as many different species aa there are individuals; for no two individuals of the same species were ever absolutely alike. A diversity, Mr. D. holds, to be the ground of a new species, must consist of something essential .that does not belong to the species, and at the same time is not a defect, but an improvement No such diversity, however, is specified by him, nor can be. For 3d, The only other variations are variations in the perfection of either some or all the leading characteristics that belong to the species. There often are individuals in the same brood, the same litter, or the same family, that are higher or more perfect types of their own species than other and the greater number of other individuals. They have a more perfect form, a higher grade of physical energies, or a stronger, quicker, more delicate and better balanced psychical or intellectual nature; and perhaps all these united. But these transmitted singly or conjointly to offspring, only contribute to perfect those who inherit them, as members of the species to which they already belong; they tend in no degree to form another species. To suppose it otherwise, is to contradict their very nature; as it is to suppose that a being that is a perfect example of its own species, is not such an example, but has in itself an element or characteristic that not only does not belong to its own species, but is fraught with a power of supplanting that species by a different one.

Now the variations which Mr. Darwin specifies, are of either the second or third of these classes; and are diversities that are perfectly natural and suitable to beings that belong to the same species. The fact, that in a numerous family of children of the same parents, no two of the same sex are exactly alike, in form, size, strength, agility, expression of countenance, quickness of sensibility, vigor of intellect, is no barrier to their being equally members of the same species. The fact that of the many hundreds of leaves on a tree, no two are perfect matches in figure, size, weight, color, flexibility, and power of absorbing carbon, and disengaging other elements, is no proof that they are not all of the same species. That diversity is essential doubtless to the perfection of the tree; and is the result of the constitution by which it is a member of the species to which it belongs; and in like manner the diversities that appear in the families of man, and in the species of the animal world, undoubtedly belong naturally to the several species in which they appear, and have their ends in the discrimination of individuals from one another, and other benefits of variety; and are no ground whatever for the formation of different species. To meet the requirement of his theory, Mr. Darwin should have produced instances of variations of individuals of a species, by the appearance in them of some new element, such as a new structure, a new organ, a new function, or instinct, such as wings springing from the shoulders of a lion, the conversion of the paws of a bear into the fins of a fish, the growth of a proboscis, like an elephant's, from the head of a giraffe, of feathers instead of hair from a horse, or others of a like kind. But he alleges no novelties of that nature. His only instances of variation, are variations produced by art in domestic animals, that left the distinctive nature that belonged to them as species wholly unaltered. We quote his most authoritative instance, the varieties produced by breeding, directed through a long succession ot generations to that end in domestic pigeons.

" Believing that it is always best to study some special group, I have after deliberation taken up domestic pigeons. I have kept every breed which I could purchase or obtain, and have been most kindly favored with skins from several quarters of the world, more especially by the Hon. W. Elliott, from India, and by the Hon. C. Murray, from Persia. Many treatises in different languages have been published on pigeons, and some of them are very important, as being of considerable antiquity. I have associated with several eminent fanciers, and have been permitted to join two of the London Pigeon Clubs. The diversity of the breeds is something astonishing. Compare the English carrier and the short-faced tumbler, and see the wonderful difference in their beaks, entailing corresponding differences in their skulls The carrier, more especially the male bird, is also remarkable from the wonderful development of the carunculated skin above the head, and this is accompanied by greatly elongated eye-lids, very large external orifices to the nostrils, and a wide gape of mouth. The short-faced tumbler has a beak in outline almost like that of a finch ; and the common tumbler has the singular and strictly inherited habit of flying at a great height in a compact flock, and tumbling in the air head over heels. The runt is a bird of great size, with long massive beak and large feet; some of the sub-breeds of runts have very long necks, others very long wings and tails, others singularly short tails. The barb is allied to the carrier, but instead of a very long beak, has a very short and very broad one. The pouter has a much elongated body, wings, and legs, and its enormously developed crop, which it glories in inflating, may well excite astonishment and even laughter. The turbit has a very short and conical beak, with a line of reversed feathers down the breast; and it has the habit of continually expanding slightly the upper part of the oesophagus. The Jacobin has the feathers so much reversed along the back of the neck that they form a hood, and it has, proportionally to its size, much elongated wing and tail feathers. The trumpeter and laugher, as their names express, utter a very different coo from the other breeds. The fantail has thirty or even forty tail feathers, instead of twelve or fourteen, the normal number in all the members of the great pigeon family, and their feathers are kept expanded, and are carried so erect that in good birds the head and tail touch -, the oil gland is quite aborted. Several other less distinct breeds might have been specified.

" The period at which the perfect plumage is acquired varies, as does the state of the down with which the nestling birds are clothed when hatched. The shape and size of the eggs vary. The manner of flight differs remarkably, as does in some breeds the voice and disposition. In certain breeds, the males and females have come to differ to a slight degree from each other.

" Altogether, at least a score of pigeons might be chosen, which, if shown to an ornithologist, and he were told that they were wild birds, would certainly, I think, be ranked by him as well-defined species. Moreover, I do not believe that any ornithologist would place the English carrier, the short-faced tumbler, the runt, the barb, pouter, and fantail in the same genus; more especially as in each of these breeds several truly inherited sub-breeds or species, as he might have called them, could be shown him.

" Great as the differences are between the breeds of pigeons, I am fully convinced that the common opinion of naturalists is correct, namely, that all have descended from the rock-pigeon (Columba livia), including under this term several geographical races, or sub-species, which differ from each other in the most trifling respects. As several of the reasons which have led me to this belief are in some degree applicable in other cases, I will here briefly give them. If the several breeds are not varieties, and have not proceeded from the rock-pigeon, they must have descended from at least seven or eight aboriginal stocks, for it is impossible to make the present domestic breeds, by the crossing of any lesser number. How, for instance, could a pouter be produced by crossing two breeds, unless one of the parent stocks possessed the characteristic enormous crop? The supposed aboriginal stocks must have been all rock-pigeons, that is, not breeding or willingly perching on trees. But besides Columba livia, with its geographical sub-species, only two or three of the species of rock-pigeons are known ; and these have not any of the characters of the domestic breeds From these several reasons [and others we omit] taken together, I can feel no doubt that all our domestic breeds have descended from the Columba livia with its geographical sub-species.

" In favor of this view I may add, firstly, That C. livia, or the rock-pigeon, has been found capable of domestication in Europe and in India, and that it agrees in habits and in a great number of points of structure with all the domestic breeds. Secondly, Although an English carrier or short-faced tumbler, differs immensely in certain characters from the rock-pigeon, yet by comparing the general sub-breeds of these breeds, more especially those brought from distant countries, we can make an almost perfect series between the extremes of the structure. Thirdly, Those characters which are mainly distinctive of each breed, for instance the wattle and length of beak of the carrier, the shortness of that of the tumbler, the number of tail-feathers in the fan-tail, are in each breed eminently variable; and the explanation of this fact will be obvious when we come to treat of selection. Fourthly, Pigeons have been watched and tended with the utmost care and loved by many people. They have been domesticated for thousands of years in several quarters of the world ; the earliest known record of pigeons is in the fifth Egyptian dynasty about 3000 B. C., as was pointed out to me by Prof. Lipsius; but Mr. Birch informs me that pigeons are given in a bill of fare in the previous dynasty. In the time of the Romans, as we hear from Pliny, immense prices were given for pigeons; ' nay, they are come to this pass, that they can reckon up their pedigree and race.' Pigeons were much valued by Akber Khan in India about the year 1600; never less than 20,000 pigeons were taken with the court. ' The monarchs of Iran and Turan sent him some very rare birds,' and his majesty, ' by crossing breeds, which method was never pursued before, has improved them astonishingly.' About this same period the Dutch were as eager about pigeons as were the old Romans. The paramount importance of these considerations in explaining the immense amount of variation which pigeons have undergone, will be obvious, when we treat of selection."— Pp. 25-32.

This is undoubtedly one of the strongest cases of variations that can be found in the whole circle of living beings. It is the result of an experiment continued through several thousands of years, in different and remote parts of the globe, the very aim of which has been to generate the greatest number, and the most marked diversities that are possible. Yet by his own concession, it has given birth to no species but birds, and no species of birds but pigeons. No insects, no fish, no reptiles, no quadrupeds have sprung from the long attempt to modify their progeny; and of birds, no condors, no albatrosses, no herons, no parrots, no geese, no jays, no wrens. The issue is nothing but pigeons, and pigeons each variety of which retains the essential characteristics of the species which he regards as their original, and has as good a title to the name of pigeon as any of the others. Instead of confirming, therefore, it is a complete confutation of his theory. To sustain it, he should have shown that this systematic nurturing and stimulating peculiarities had issued in the production of species essentially unlike the originals; such as the dinornis, the swan, the vulture, the peacock, the owl, the eagle, the thrush, the nightingale, the humming-bird. Had he shown that the varieties that first resulted from the experiment gradually lost the characteristics of the pigeon, and assumed wholly dissimilar structures, instincts, and habits, and at length became genuine hawks, buzzards, owls, eagles, vultures on the one side, and swans, geese, peacocks, thrushes, robins, redbreasts, swallows, and humming-birds on the other, he would have verified his theory; and failing of that, he overthrows it. For the vastest experiment that has been made on an animal producing very numerously, and of the greatest flexibility of nature, has, under the greatest aids and stimulations of art, shown that it has not the least tendency to give birth to any other creatures than those of its own distinctive peculiarities; that instead, its constitution renders it incapable of laying aside its own and assuming the nature that belongs especially to a different order of creatures.

That many varieties, and varieties that are very marked, may and do result from art, and arise also independently of it, is no proof of Mr. Darwin's theory, nor does it yield it any support. The question is not whether varieties exist in species, and very wide varieties; that is admitted on all hands ; but whether those varieties, naturally and generally, or ever pass into other species as different from the original and from one another as the eagle is from the dove, the vulture from the thrush, and the albatross from the bird of paradise; and to that question the experiment on pigeons gives a negative, not an affirmative answer. Variety is not peculiar to pigeons. It prevails everywhere. No two birds of a species are exactly alike. They are so diverse that they can be easily distinguished by each other. They never mistake strangers for their mates. No two quadrupeds of the same species are exactly alike; no two insects even are, infinite as their numbers are, no two blades of grass, no two leaves of the forest. Wide differences of figure, size, hue, position, sensibility to the light, and capacity for the special functions that belong to them, are compatible with their being of the same species. There are no greater varieties in any class of living beings probably, than in man, and even in the families and individuals of single nations; yet they are all of the same species, they all have substantially the same corporeal, psychical, and intellectual nature ; and that nature is peculiar to them. None of the other inhabitants of the globe share in it. In this most essential step in his argument Mr. Darwin thus wholly fails.

The next great postulate on which he proceeds, is equally unauthorized ; namely, that a power, which he denominates Natural Selection, plays a part in perpetuating, and heightening the beneficial varieties that appear iu individuals, like that which the breeders of pigeons play in perpetuating and heightening their varieties, and nurtures, and advances them from step to step, till they finally reach the character of new and independent species.

" Can the principle of Selection, which we have seen is so potent in the hands of pan, apply in nature ? I think we shall see it can act most effectually. Let it be borne in mind in what an endless number of strange peculiarities our domestic productions and, in a lesser degree, those under nature, vary; and how strong the hereditary tendency is. Under domestication it may be truly said that the whole organization becomes in some degree plastic. Let it be borne in mind how infinitely complex and close fitting are the mutual relations of all organic beings to each other and to their physical conditions 0. life. Can it then be thought improbable, seeing that variations useful to man have undoubtedly occurred, that other variations useful in some way in the great and complex battle of life, should sometimes occur in the course of thousands of generations? If such do occur, can 'we doubt (remembering that more individuals are born than can possibly survive), that individuals having any advantage, however slight over others, would have the best chance of surviving and procreating their kind ? On the other hand, we may feel sure that any variations in the least degree injurious, would be rigidly destroyed. This preservation of favorable variations and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection. Variations neither useful nor injurious would not be affected by natural selection, and would be left a fluctuating element, as perhaps we see in the species called polymorphic.

" We shall best understand the probable course of Natural Selection by taking the case of a country undergoing some physical change for instance of climate. The proportional numbers of its inhabitants would almost immediately undergo a change, and some species might become extinct. If the country were open on its borders, new forms would certainly immigrate, and this also would seriously disturb the relations of some of the former inhabitants. But in the case of an island, or a country partly surrounded by barriers, into which new and better adapted forms could not freely enter, we should then have places in the economy of nature which would assuredly be better filled up if some of the original inhabitants were in some manner modified, for had the area been open to immigration, these same places would have been seized on by intruders. In such case every slight modification which, in the course of ages, chanced to arise, and which in any way favored the individuals of any of the species, by better adapting them to their altered condition, would tend to be preserved, and natural selection would thus have free scope for the work of improvement.

" We have reason to believe that a change in the conditions of life, by specially acting on the reproductive system, causes or increases variability; and in the foregoing case the conditions of life are supposed to have undergone a change, and this would manifestly be favorable to natural selection, by giving a better chance of profitable variations occurring ; and unless profitable variations do occur, natural selection can do nothing. Not that, as I believe, any extreme amount of variability is necessary; a> man can certainly produce great results by adding up in any given direction mere individual differences, so could nature, but far more easily, from having incomparably longer time at her disposal. Nor do I believe that any great- physical change, as of climate, or any unusual degree of isolation to check immigration, J8 actually necessary to produce new and unoccupied places for natural selection to fill up by modifying and improving some of the varying inhabitants.

"As roan can produce and certainly has produced a great result by his methodical and unconscious means of selection, what may not nature effect ? Man can act only on external and visible characters; nature cares nothing for appearances, except in Bo far as they may be useful to any being. She can act on every internal organ, on every shade of constitutional difference, on the whole machinery of life. Man selects only for his own good ; nature only for that of the being whom she tends. Every selected character is fully exercised by her; and the being is placed under well-suited conditions of life.

" Can we wonder that nature's productions should be far truer in character than man's?

" It may he said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest, rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good ; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of every organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life. We see nothing of these slow changes in progress, until the hand of time has marked the long lapse of ages, and then so imperfect is our view into long past geological ages, that we only see that the forms of life are now different from what they formerly were.

"Although natural selection can act only through and for the good of each being, yet characters and structures which we are apt to consider as of very trifling importance, may thus be acted on

" Natural selection will modify the structure of the young in relation to the parent, and the parent in relation to the young. In social animals it will adapt the structure of each individual for the benefit of the community, if each in consequence profits by the change. What natural selection cannot do, is to modify the structure of one species, without giving it any advantage, for the good of another species."—Pp. 77-83.

" If variations useful to any organic being do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterised will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life ; and from the strong principle of inheritance they will tend to produce offspring similarly characterized. This principle of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural Selection. Natural selection on the principle of qualities being inherited at corresponding ages, can modity the egg, seed, or young as easily as the adult.

" Whether natural selection has really acted in nature in modifying and adapting the various forms of life to their several conditions and stations, must be judged of by the general tenor and balance of evidence given in the following chapters. But we already see how it entails extinction, and how largely extinction has acted in the world's history geology plainly declares. Natural selection also leads to divergence of character, for more living beings can be supported on the same area the more they diverge in structure, habits and constitution, of which we see proof by looking at the inhabitants of any small spot, or at naturalized productions. Therefore, during the modifications of the descendant of any one species, and during the incessant struggle of all species to increase in numbers, the more diversified their descendants become, the better will be their chance of succeeding in the battle of life. Thus the small differences distinguishing varieties of the same species, will steadily tend to increase till they come to equal the greater differences between species of the eame genus, or even of distinct general—Pp. 117, 118.

He thus maintains that there is a power, which he calls Natural Selection, which, like a foster-mother, seizes, preserves, and nourishes the beneficial varieties that appear in individuals and species, and strengthens and augments them, till at length they change the nature of the animals in which thev appear, and constitute them a new and essentially different species. There is, however, no such power in nature. He alleges no proofs of its existence, but assumes it. He treats it, indeed, as though it were an everywhere present and active intelligence ; for how, without intelligence, should it give its fostering care only to variations that are beneficial to the individuals in which they appear, and refuse aid to varieties that are unbeneficial or injurious ? But it is a factitious existence, and has no other office than to give a color of plausibility to his theory. Had he fancied an agent under the name of Change, and ascribed to it the functions he assigns to this, it would not have been more baseless and unscientific. 2. He speaks of it as though it were external to the beings on whom it exerts its power. But, if so, and if its office is, as he asserts, to preserve and perpetuate the variation which it favors, it cannot exert an influence that modifies and transforms their natures. That would not be to preserve, but to extinguish them. It is directly to contradict his theory, to represent the modifications which he claims are wrought in species, as the work of an external force, that, if it produces them, must produce them by a violation of the natures on which it acts. The office, however, of natural selection, according to his definition of it, is not directly, by an independent and resistless power of its own, to mould varieties into new species: instead, it is only to place the beings in whom variations appear, in conditions that are favorable to their preservation, and the transmission of their peculiarities to successors. 3d. If the force that is supposed to mould variations into new species is external to the animals on whom it is exerted ; and its agency, as Mr. Darwin maintains, is favorable to the preservation and perfection of the variations which it affects, its influence plainly cannot tend, in any measure, to change the nature of those variations and convert them into new species. For those variations, as we have seen, instead of divergences from the proper nature of their species, are only more exact and full types of that nature. Their differences from other individuals of their species, are simply that they have distinctive characteristics that are proper to it in higher degrees: namely, they have more perfect forms, greater muscular energy, quicker sensibilities, finer instincts, more graceful motions, or other qualities that are proper to their special nature. An external force or adjustment of conditions, therefore, that is favorable to the preservation of such superior specimens of species, cannot, by the supposition, tend by creating and fostering deviations from their proper distinctive nature, to convert them into directly opposite variations. Look at the several points of his theory : First, The variations that are to be preserved and cherished are, he expressly affirms, variations that are advantageous to the individuals in which they arise ; and variations, therefore, as we have shown (for he excludes all others) that lie wholly in their being more perfect specimens than others of the peculiarities of their species. Secondly : The office of natural selection, whatever that be, whether an external force, or an external condition, is simply to preserve, favor, and perpetuate those variations; and that is simply to preserve and perpetuate individuals in whom the peculiar and distinctive characteristics of their species are united in higher forms and degrees than in other individuals. Can anything be more certain, then, than that the effect of natural selection, as far as it achieves its aim, will be to perpetuate the species unchanged in its purest and highest form ; not its transformation into a different species ? His natural selection, therefore, if there be such a power or function, confutes his theory, not confirms it. 4th, If natural selection be a mere cast of external conditions, that is favorable to the preservation and perpetuation in animals of the best forms of the characteristics that distinguish their species; and if, therefore, any change of their nature takes place, it must be the work of that nature itself, acting according to its inborn and necessary laws: then plainly, no such change of nature as Mr. Darwin contemplates, ever takes place, or can. For the law of every being's nature, Mr. Darwin himself admits, is to perpetuate itself unaltered in the qualities that belong to, and constitute its peculiarity as a living thing. He does not pretend that any animal ever, by its own individual functions or acts, wrought a change in its nature, by which it became a member of a different species. So far from it, he holds that every individual continues through life to be a member of that identical species to which it belongs at its birth; and that the change which he affirms takes place, instead of being concentred in one individual, or even-a few, is distributed by imperceptible gradations through a vast series extending, perhaps, through many thousands or millions of generations. But if no individual ever works such a change in itself; if nature in every individual by a predominant and all-prevailing law, perpetuates itself unaltered, and transmits itself, and if, as we have seen natural selection, if there be such a power, guarantees, as far as its influence extends, the preservation and perpetuation of nature in that form in which its characteristic peculiarities appear in their most perfect shape ; how can a change from one species to another be accomplished? If every force, internal or external, that exerts itself upon nature, expends its energies in the preservation and transmission of the nature on which it acts, unaltered, how can a transmutation from one species to another be wrought? What definition can be framed that would more absolutely preclude, than Mr. Darwin's postulates and admissions do, the possibility of a change of individuals or races from one species to another ? By his own representations and concessions, as long as" a series of individuals continue under the sway of their own nature and of natural selection, there is an infallible certainty that they will, there is an invincible necessity that they should, transmit to their offspring at every stage of succession that nature which belongs to them peculiarly as a species, and in a form the purest from all foreign admixtures, and embodying the highest measure of the perfection that is specially proper to it.

5. The supposition that a species can change itself suddenly or gradually, is contradictory, also, to the law of inheritance, by which offspring derive from progenitors, the peculiarities by which they are specially characterized. This great law of living natures, is fully recognised by Mr. Darwin:

" Any variation that is not inherited, is unimportant to us. Bnt the number and diversity of inheritable deviations of structure, both those of slight and those of considerable physiological importance, is endless. No breeder doubts how strong is the tendency to inheritance; like produces like is his fundamental belief; doubts have been thrown on this principle by theoretical writers alone. When a deviation appears not unl'requently, and we see it in the father and child, we cannot tell whether it may not be due to the same original cause acting on both ; but when amongst individuals, apparently exposed to the same conditions, any very rare deviation, due to some extraordinary combination of circumstances, appears in the parent—say, once amongst several million individuals—and it re-appears in the child, the mere doctrine of chances almost compels ns to attribute its re-appearance to inheritance. Every one must have heard of cases of albinism, prickly skin, etc., appearing in several members of the same family. If strange and rare deviations of structure are truly inherited, less strange and commoner deviations may be freely admitted to be inheritable: perhaps the correct way of viewing the whole subject would be, to look at the inheritance of every character whatever as the rule, and non-inheritance as the anomaly:'—Pp. 18, 19.

How now is this great law that individuals transmit, sooner or later, every character that distinguishes them to their offspring, to be reconciled with his theory that there is in the constitution of every individual a tendency not only not to transmit its character unaltered to offspring, but to transmute its nature and impress it with a force by which it shall ultimately pass from the species to which it properly belongs, and constitute a wholly new one ? To suppose two such directly opposite tendencies in the constitution, is to exhibit them as mere counteractives, and as having their office alike in causing a change of its nature, and in continuing it unchanged, and is a self-contradiction. Mr. Darwin thus again confutes himself. That the law of inheritance prevails in every order of living beings is indisputable. It is a fact of observation and knowledge to every student and every spectator of nature. In admitting it, therefore, Mr. D. overturns his assumption, that parallel with that all-pervading law there is a directly opposite one, that living beings shall not transmit their proper nature to their offspring, but instead, shall convey to them a nature that is perpetually dropping its most essential features, and adopting others of a very dissimilar cast in shape and function, in their room.

6. Mr. Darwin everywhere assumes and represents that the changes which he alleges in the nature of individuals and races, are favorable to their preservation. He however offers no proof of it, nor could he. So far from it, many of the modifications which he supposes have taken place, may naturally, and must, for aught we can see, have exposed the animals that were the subjects of them to great danger. How could the change of the paws of the black bear to the fins of a whale, have contributed to its security when the process, though far enough advanced, to disqualify it for defending itself from its foes on land, had not reached such a point that it could live exclusively in the water ? Were such a half metamorphosis Immediately wrought in ten or twenty thousand of the race that inhabit the northern region of this continent, would their chance of safety be improved by it? Unable to climb or walk, unable to pursue game or search for vegetable sustenance, unable to defend themselves from foes on land, and at the snme time unable to live exclusively in the water, can any fail to see that the probabilities of their destruction, in place of being diminished, would be multiplied a thousand fold ? Would the horse's security of health and life be augmented by a transformation into the tapir, when the process had reached that stage, in which it was neither capable of catching and eating the insects on which that animal lives, nor of eating grass ? Carry animals through a transformation of nature, at a point in which, that is to occupy ages, they are neither to be fish, birds, nor beasts; and neither to be gramnivorous, carnivorous, nor omnivorous, and therefore are to be without food suited to their natures; and will they be more sure of a safe, healthy, and flourishing life, than though retaining the nature that is proper to them ! This is certainly one of the boldest— we think it is one of the weakest—of the many fictions of which Mr. D.'s elaborate theory is made up.

7. He maintains also with great earnestness that all the modifications of species, which he holds have taken place, were beneficial to the subjects—advancing them to a higher nature and augmenting their enjoyment. And this is an important feature of his theory; tor if those supposed transmutations are no improvements, why should they take place ? He, however, offers no proofs that any of the changes he contemplates are such improvements. Not the slightest evidence or intimation indeed does he give, for example, that the changes wrought by art in domesticated pigeons have improved their nature, or been of any service to them. What advantage can it be, for instance, to the short-faced family, that their faces are somewhat shorter than the original rock pigeon, or any other varieties that have descended from them ? What benefit is it to the carrier that it has an excrescent skin above the head, and elongated eyelids, and a wide gape of mouth? Of what special advantage is it to the barb, that while allied to the carrier, instead of a very long beak, it has a very short and a very broad one ? What extraordinary service can it be to the pouter that it has nn enormously developed crop which it glories in inflating ? What special benefits result to the turbit, that it has a line of reversed feathers running down the breast? What can be more absurd than to imagine that these animals are raised to a higher grade of nature by the changes art has wrought in them, or have a higher measure of enjoyment than an equal number would have had, had they retained the shapes, and hues, and habits that were peculiar to the originals from which they have descended ? Or what improvement can it be supposed to be to the black bear to be converted into the whale, or the horse to be transmuted into the tapir, or the tapir into the horse ? Can anything be more preposterous than the fancy that it can be demonstrated that the modifications of nature Mr. Darwin contemplates have been improvements, and advanced the subjects of them in the scale of existence and of enjoyment ? He does not attempt to determine what the exact natures were of the four or five primary forms from which he holds all present species and individuals have descended. He cannot demonstrate that some of the present species are not of as much lower rank than their supposed originals, as others of them are of a higher; that the line of their divergence from their first progenitors, was not as often downward as upward. This feature of his theory is thus but a fiction. Important improvements have indeed been produced in certain domestic animals by care, as in cattle, horses, sheep, swine. To assume, however, from that, that a supposed set of changes of a wholly different nature, wrought independently of human intervention, would also all be in the direction of improvement, as Mr. Darwin seems to have done, is to contradict the laws of nature, as well as to step out of the circle of logic.

In his attempt to establish this branch of his theory, Mr. Darwin is ttuis wholly unsuccessful. There is no such power as his feigned Natural Selection ; and if there were, its whole influence would be to prevent instead of producing the effects he ascribes to it; and with this his whole system falls.

His argument in support of his theory from what he denominates the struggle between animals for existence, is equally ineffective.

"I use," he says, "the term Struggle for Existence in a large and metaphorical sense, including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) not only the life of the individuals, but success in leaving progeny. Two canine animals in a time of dearth may be truly said to struggle with each other which shall get food and live. But a plant on the edge of a desert is said to struggle for life against the drought, though more properly it should be said to be dependent on the moisture. A plant which annually produces a thousand seeds, of which on an average only one comes to maturity, may be more truly said to struggle with the plants of the same and other kinds, which already clothe the ground. The misseltoe is dependent on the apple and a few other trees, but can only in a farfetched sense, be said to struggle with these trees, for if too many of these parasites grow on the same tree, it will languish and die. But several seedling misseltoes, growing close together on the same branch, may more truly be said to struggle with each other. As the misseltoe is disseminated by birds, its existence depends on birds; and it may metaphorically be said to struggle with other fruit-bearing plants in order to tempt birds to devour and thus disseminate its seeds, rather than those of other plants. In these several senses which pass into each other, I use for convenience sake the general term of struggle for existence.

" A struggle for existence inevitably follows from the high rate at which all organic beings tend to increase. Every being which during its natural lifetime produces several eggs and seeds must suffer destruction during some period of its life, and during some season or occasional year ; otherwise on the principle of geometrical increase, its numbers would quickly become so inordinately great that no country could support the product. Hence as more individuals are produced than can possibly survive, there must in every case be a struggle for existence, either one individual with another of the same species, or with the individuals of distinct species, or with the physical conditions of life

" There is no exception to the rule that every organic being naturally increases at so high a rate, that if not destroyed, the earth would soon be covered by the progeny of a single pair. Even slow-breeding man has doubled in twenty-five years, and at this rate, in a few thousand years, there would literally not be standing room for his progeny. Linnaeus has calculated that if an annual plant produced only two seeds—and there U no plant so unproductive as this—and their seedlings next year produced two, and so on, then in twenty years there would be a million of plants. The elephant is reckoned to be the slowest breeder of all animals ; and I have taken some pains to estimate its probable minimum rate of natural increase. It will be under the mark to assume that it breeds when thirty years old, and goes on breeding till ninety years old, bringing forth three pair of young in this interval. If this be so, at the end of the fifth century, there would be alive fifteen million elephants descended from the first pair.

" In a state of nature almost every plant produces seed, and amongst animals there are very few which do not annually pair. Hence we may confidently assert that all plants and animals are tending to increase at a geometrical ratio, that all would most rapidly stock every station in which they could anyhow exist, and that the geometrical tendency to increase must be checked by destruction at some period of life. Our familiarity with the larger domestic animals, tends, I think, to mislead us: we see no great destruction falling on them, and we forget that thousands are annually slaughtered for food, and that in a state of nature an equal number would have somehow to be disposed of."—Pp. 62-64.

This attempt to give a dramatic and belligerent form to the life not only of animals generally but of plants, is singularly unsuited to a scientific work. It gives, indeed, a touch of vivacity to his speculations, but bespeaks their unsoundness. Why resort to such an expedient to give a color of probability to his theory, if he has legitimate evidence of its truth ? What can be more preposterous than to represent the population of Great Britain as having a struggle for existence with the cattle and sheep which they slaughter for food ? Mr. Darwin might as well say, and indeed he does in effect say, there is a struggle for existence between them and the wheat they grind and the bread they bake. The cattle, sheep, and wheat are not used for food in order to their destruction as competitors with man for existence; but they are raised in order to their being used as means of life to man, and they owe their existence on so vast a scale to their appropriation to that use. Mr. Darwin seems to view the profusion with which living forms are brought into existence very much as though the only end of the Creator, or perhaps he would say nature, in giving them being, were that they should exist and multiply their kind. That they are in a large degree mere means to a higher end, and that they answer that end often by their seeds and eggs, when used as food by animals and men, as truly as by the continuance of their individual life and the multiplication of their kind, is left out of consideration in his argument. . . A large share of animals also feed on animals. They carry the work of destruction, however, no farther than is necessary for their own sustenance. They are not wanton exterminators. Yet Mr. Darwin contemplates this great feature of animal life as a gladiatorial contest; the aim of which is the destruction of antagonists and nothing else. But apart from this false view, the fact that so vast a proportion of animals are appropriated as food to other animals and to man, yields no support to his theory. For the question is not, whether such animals as are superior to others of their kind in strength, fleetness, or other qualities, may not have the best chance of living and propagating; but whether living and giving birth to offspring, the qualities in which they excel will gradually so change as to carry those who inherit them out of their natural species, and constitute new ones ? But the fact that certain qualities existing in higher perfection in a few individuals are the means of preserving those individuals, and enabling them to transmit their peculiar nature to offspring, surely lays no foundation for the loss of that nature by their descendants, and assumption of a radically different one. The supposition is, as we have shown, a self-contradiction. The fact that those progenitors are eminently perfect specimens of the species to which they belong, is a ground of certainty that their descendants will also be eminently perfect specimens of that species; not that they will be disinherited of their proper and distinctive nature, and receive a wholly dissimilar and foreign one. So far from it, the existence of any animals whatever depends largely, at least, on their continuing to possess their present natures. Those that are carnivorous cannot continue unless others exist on which they can feed ; and those, such as many species of fish and insects, that multiply on a vast scale, cannot be kept within such limits as the well-being of their races require, unless destroyed in immense multitudes while in the forms of spawn, eggs, or larvse. Their natures must remain essentially what they are, in order not only to their existing in the highest forms of their several species, but to their existing at all. Mr. Darwin's chapter on the Struggle for Existence, thus not only yields no support to his theory, but overthrows it; as, were it true, for aught that appears, the different races of animals might at length acquire natures by which they would neither gain food for themselves, nor yield it to others; and their struggle would end in their universal annihilation.

Mr. Darwin is aware that his theory is embarrassed by formidable difficulties. He admits that "some of them are so grave that he cannot reflect on them without being staggered." He thinks, however, the greater number can be obviated, and that such as cannot are not fatal.

The objection he first notices, is presented by the fact that no confirmation of his views is furnished by the vast relics of past generations of animals that lie buried in the crust of the earth.

" Why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms ? Why is not all nature in confusion, instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined ?"—P. 154.

This confutation of his scheme by the relics of the past— extending, according, to his geological views, in an unbroken series through millions of ages, he attempts to evade, but in our judgment without any even apparent success.

" As natural selection acts solely by the preservation of profitable modifications, each new form will tend, in a fully stocked country, to take the place of, and finally to exterminate, its own less improved parent or other less favored forms with which it comes in competition. Thus extinction and natural selection will go hand in hand. Hence if we look at each species as descended from some other unknown form, both the parent and all the transitional varieties will generally have been exterminated by the very process of formation and perfection of the new form.

" But as by this theory, innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth ?....! believe the answer mainly lies in the record being incomparably less perfect than is generally supposed; the imperfection of the record being chiefly due to organic beings not inhabiting profound depths of the sea, and to their remains being embedded and preserved to a future age only in masses of sediment, sufficiently thick and extensive to withstand an enormous amount of future degradation ; and such fossiliferous masses can be accumulated only where much sediment is deposited on the shallow bed of the sea, whilst it slowly subsides. These contingencies will occur only rarely, and after enormously long intervals. Whilst the bed of the sea is stationary or is rising, or when very little sediment is being deposited, there will be blanks in our geological history. The crust of the earth is a vast museum, but the natural collections have been made only at intervals of time immensely remote."—Pp. 155, 156.

But this, in the first place, is not in harmony with the geological theory of Sir C. Lyell to which Mr. Darwin gives his assent. The distinctive feature of that theory is, that it represents the changes that have been wrought in the crust of the earth, in the formation of strata, and the burial in them of plants and animals, as having taken place under the uniform action of the same forces as are now working similar effects in the earth's surface, and at the bottom of the sea. On that theory, therefore, the strata present a continuous record of at least vast areas of the earth extending, according to Sir C. Lyell, through immense periods. To assume therefore as Mr. Darwin here does, that the strata of which we have a knowledge were only formed " rarely, and after enormously long intervals," is to desert his own principles.

But next; granting that such were the fact, it contributes nothing to the relief of his scheme from the objection. For the strata unquestionably present pretty fair and full samples of the chief inhabitants both of the waters and the land at the periods when they were formed. They certainly present millions and millions of forms of a great variety of species both of land and sea animals. If then, as Mr. Darwin maintains, the transitions from one species to another were at those periods in progress in every order of living beings, and if millions and millions were at those epochs at the different stages of transition from the species they were leaving, to those to which they were passing, many specimens of the intermediate shapes through which they were advancing would be found among these infinite masses of relics. Not a solitary intermediate or transitional form, however, is found among them. Not a solitary bear is found half changed to a whale. Not a solitary horse half transmuted to a tapir. So far from it, Cuvier, on finding a solitary bone of a skeleton, was able at once to tell what the other bones were of the animal to which it belonged, whether it was graminivorous or carnivorous; and to reconstruct its whole form. And the species universally found in the strata, are as well defined, and as broadly discriminated from each other as the species of the living races of the present day are. The confutation of this theory bv the strata is therefore absolute. The absence from them of all transitional forms demonstrates, in the most emphatic manner, that no such forms were in existence in the periods of their deposition. A like objection is presented to hia theory by the absence of transitional forms from all living species ; and he fails equally to answer it.

" But it may be urged that when several closely-allied species inhabit the same territory, we surely ought to find at the present time many transitional forms. Let us take a simple case: In travelling from north to south over a continent, we generally meet at successive intervals with closely-allied or representative species, evidently filling nearly the same place in the natural economy of the land. These representative species often meet and interlock; and as the one becomes rarer and rarer, the other becomes more and more frequent, till the one replaces the other. But if we compare these species when they intermingle, they are generally as absolutely distinct from each other in every detail of structure as are specimens taken from the metropolis inhabited by each. By my theory these allied species have descended from a common parent; and during the process of modification, each has become adapted to the conditions of life of its own region, and has supplanted and exterminated its original parent, and all the transitional varieties between its past and present state. Hence we ought not to expect at the present time to meet with numerous transitional varieties in each region, though they must have existed there, and may be embedded there in a fossil condition."—P. 156.

We see not how Mr. Darwin can regard this as a fair statement of the objection to his theory presented by its total want of confirmation from the present condition of the animal world ; or if it be correct, how his admission that living animals yield it no confirmation is an answer to that objection. The difficulty he is to meet is not simply that not many transitional forms are found among living species, though on his theory many such ought now to exist, and be susceptive of easy identification ; but that not a solitary transitional species or individual exists among the living. Why, if his theory is true, is it not verified, and on a vast scale, by the animals that are now in life ? Why is it that not a single fish, fowl, beast, or insect, is known that is in a state of transmutation from one species to another? Mr. Darwin has not pointed out a single animal whose present condition yields any support to his system. He has not hit on any bear that is half metamorphosed to a whale, nor horse that is half transmuted to a tapir; he has no specimen of a creature that is half fish and half fowl, or half beast and half man. The whole animal world proclaims his theory false—a wild and preposterous caricature.

But supposing the question to be as he states it, why are there not many transitional forms among the living races? How does his admission that there are not, and assumption that the power of modification long since reached its close, answer that objection ? On his theory, the tendency to modification is as rife in all present species and individuals as it was at any past period; and he alleges the varieties that are now produced and producing in pigeons as proofs and exemplifications of the reality and present activity of the forces to which he ascribes the generation of new species. To admit that no such forces are now acting on, or in the animal world, is to strike away the foundation on which the fabric of his speculations rests. If no such power now reveals itself; if no traces of it are found in the relics of past ages, where is Mr. Darwin to find proofs that it ever existed 2 The method by which he thus attempts to save his theory is nothing else than the abandonment of it. If the reason that no evidences of its truth are furnished by the present condition of the animal world is, as he virtually concedes, that the principle or force of transmutation is no longer in existence, must not the reason that no proofs of its truth is furnished by the relics of the past animal world equally be that that supposed force has had no existence in the ages that are passed ?

He next proceeds to objections drawn from the nature of the changes he holds are wrought in the structure and habits of animals.

"It has been asked," he says, "by the opponents of such views as I hold, how, for instance, a land carnivorous animal could have been converted into one with aquatic habits ; for how could the animal, in its transitional state, have subsisted ?" —P. 161.

And he attempts to obviate the objection by the fact that there are animals that are amphibious:

" It would be easy to show that within the same group carnivorous animals exist having every intermediate grade between truly aquatic and strictly terrestrial habits; and as each exists by a struggle for life, it is clear that each is well adapted in its habits to its place in nature."—P. 161.

But this, though an objection he can never satisfactorily answer, is not the objection that first demanded bis attention. The great question that needs to be answered, in order to the support of his theory, is—not how can animals subsist, on the supposition that they pass through the change of species which he represents; but what power is there in their nature to produce those changes, which require a creative energy for their cause, as much as the origination by a direct act of new orders of being, or new worlds ? It is no answer to this question to say: God has created animals of a great diversity of nature; some aquatic, some terrestrial, and some intermediate; and they all have means of subsistence suited to their peculiar constitutions: therefore animals that he created terrestrial have the power of transforming themselves into amphibious or aquatic; and animals that he created aquatic and amphibious have the power of transmuting themselves into terrestrial. God provided all the various kinds of animals which he created with food suited to their peculiar natures; therefore, if those animals change their natures, so as to require wholly different food for their sustenance, they will find kinds of food ready for them that are equally adapted to their new constitutions ! Such is his logic. But the fact that God creates new species of animals surely does not prove that animals also can create them. The fact that God provides for the sustenance of the animals he creates, does not prove that if they were to change their nature so as to be unable to eat the food he provided for them, he would make another provision suited to their metamorphosed natures! Yet this is the argument Mr. Darwin here uses to relieve himself from objection.

This omission of the point that chiefly required his consideration, and substitution of an inferior one in its place, occurs repeatedly in his attempts to relieve his theory from the formidable difficulties with which it is embarrassed.

" If about a dozen genera of birds had become extinct, or were unknown, who would have ventured to surmise that birds might have existed which used their wings solely as flappers, like the loggerheaded duck; as fins in the water and front legs on the land, like the penguin; as sails, like the ostrich; and functionally for no purpose, like the apteryx ? Yet the structure of each of these birds is good for it, under the conditions of life to which it is exposed, for each has to live by a struggle; but it is not necessarily the best possible under all possible conditions. It must not be inferred from these remarks that any of the grades of wing-structure here alluded to, which perhaps may all have resulted from disuse, indicate the natural steps by which birds have acquired their perfect power of flight; but they serve, at least, to show what diversified means of transition are possible."—P. 163.

But the fact that God has created animals with these peculiar structures, is no proof that these and other animals he creates and endows with their peculiar natures, are able to reject those natures and assume others of a different type. As God himself does not produce those transmutations, what power is there that does or can ? That is a question Mr. Darwin thus far has not answered. He has indicated no cause of which they can possibjy be the effect.

"To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree. Yet reason tells me that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye, to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imaginations, can hardly be considered real."—P. 167.

Here again he treats what he calls natural selection as having as adequate power to create perfect eyes as the Almighty himself has. Inasmuch as God has created eyes with all their "inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration," he holds there is no difficulty in believing natural selection can do it also; and by that he means animals without eyes, or with but imperfect ones, in the favorable conditions which what he denominates natural selection yields them for the exertion of their creating and transmuting powers! In other words, he believes insects, fish, fowl, and beasts, to be as intelligent and as omnipotent as the allseeing and allpowerful is! But where is his proof of this pantheistic or atheistic doctrine? Not a shadow of evidence has he thus far produced, that animals possess such attributes. Why thus continually evade the point on which his whole system depends ? Let him demonstrate it, if he can.

But beyond this, if the creature is possessed of this extraordinary power, how is it, we wish to know, that none of the countless thousands of our race who have been born blind, or have lost their sight by disease or accident, have exerted the creating or modifying energies they possess in retrieving their injured, or perfecting their defective organs? If such an active and effective tendency reigns in every living being, as Mr. Darwin maintains, to modify what is imperfect, and give it a higher and more beneficial form, ought it not to have revealed itself in some of these individuals, by the production of organs they so deeply needed, and especially when accompanied, as it has been, with a distinct consciousness of the want, and knowledge, in a measure, of the advantages enjoyed by those who are in possession of sight! How is it that Mr. Darwin's theory, if true, has no confirmation from a quarter which ought to have yielded it the most ample verification?

He thus not only fails to furnish any proofs of his theory, but avoids a direct consideration of its import in relation to God; and boldly assuming it to be true, confines himself to endeavors to show how, being supposed to be true, the past and present natures and conditions of the animal world, are to be accounted for, by what he denominates the tendency to variation, natural selection, the struggle for existence, and the principle of inheritance. He not only fails in that also, at every step, but some of the facts he alleges directly confute his theory.

" He who believes that each being has been created as we now see it, must occasionally have felt surprised when he has met with an animal having habits and structure not at all in agreement. What can be plainer than that the webbed feet of ducks and geese are formed for swimming? Yet there are upland geese with webbed feet, which rarely or never go near the water; and no one, except Audubon, has seen the frigate bird, which has all its four toes webbed, alight on the surface of the sea. On the other hand, grebes and coots are eminently aquatic, although their toes are only bordered by membrane. What seems plainer than that the long toes of grallatores are formed for walking over swamps and floating plants, yefc the water hen is nearly as aquatic as the coot; and the landrail nearly as terrestrial as the quail or partridge. In such cases, and many others could be given, habits have changed without a corresponding change of structure. The webbed feet of the upland goose may be said to have been rudimentary in function, though not in structure. In the frigate bird, the deeply scooped membrane between the toes shows that structure has begun to change."—P. 166.

But these cases confute in place of sustaining Mr. Darwin. If his theory were true, the reason that the goose and the frigate bird have become in such a measure non-aquatic, must be that a change has taken place in their form, that fits them to be inhabitants of land, instead of water. But such a change would undoubtedly embrace their feet, the webs of which are specially fitted for water. The fact, therefore, that their feet remain unaltered, demonstrates that no such power of self-modification resides in them, as he asserts, and thence, that his theory of natural selection ig a fiction. We have another example of this logic in the following passage.

" If we look at the sting of the bee as having originally existed in a remote progenitor as a boring and serrated instrument like that in so many members of the same great order, and which has been modified, but not perfected for its present purpose, with the poison originally adapted to cause galls, subsequently intensified, tee can Perhaps understand how it is that the use of the sting should so often cause the insect's own death; for if, on the whole, the power of stinging be useful to the community, it will fulfill all the requirements of natural selection, though it may cause the death of some few members."—P. 180.

He thus first assumes, without proof, that the sting of the bee was originally essentially different in structure and office from what it now is. Next, one element of that difference was, that it then had no such "backward serratures" as it now has, that render it impossible for the insect, when it thrusts it into its enemy, to withdraw it. Thirdly, he holds that that change by which the use of its sting has become fatal to the insect, has been the work of natural selection.

Fourthly, he holds, also, that the poison of the sting has been much exacerbated by natural selection. By his own supposition, therefore, natural selection has wrought a change in the structure of the insect that not only is not beneficial, but that is fatal to it. For, if the organ was originally formed for boring and sawing, its structure must have been such that it could be retracted without difficulty; and therefore it could have had no such backward serratures, as now render its withdrawment when pierced into the flesh of animal or man, impossible. Those " serratures" are the work, then, of natural selection ; and yet they contribute nothing to the benefit of the insect; for the efficacy of the sting depends on tho poison infused into the wound, not on the retention of the sting itself there. And this is a confutation of his theory : for he maintains with the utmost distinctness and emphasis, that natural selection works no changes but such as are beneficial to the being itself in whom they take place; none but what give it a fresh advantage in the struggle for existence with other beings with whom it comes in contact.

" Natural selection," he says, " will never produce in a being anything injurious to itself, for natural selection acts solely by and for the good of each. No organ will be formed, as Paley has remarked, for the purpose of causing pain, or for doing an injury to its possessor. If a fair balance be struck between the good and evil caused by each part, each will be found on the whole, advantageous. After the lapse of time, under the changing conditions of life, if any part comes to be injurious, it will be modified ; or if it be not so, the being will become extinct, as myriads have become extinct."—P. 179.

By his own showing, then, if there were such a power as natural selection and it had wrought important changes in the structure of the bee's sting, it would not have varied its form so as to render the use of the organ fatal to the insect. The fact that it has its present form, and can be used only at the forfeiture of the insect's life, is a demonstration, therefore, that natural selection has had nothing to do with its structure ; and that the power itself is but a fiction.

We might add many other examples of similar self-confutation ; but we will only refer to his attempt to sustain his theory by the pretext, that it ia inexplicable that a being of infinite wisdom should have created animals of structures like those of the existing races; but that their forms''and natures are explicable on the supposition that they are the work of the animals themselves, under the promptings of natural selection.

" Nothing can be more hopeless than to attempt to explain the similarity of pattern in members of the same class, by utility, or by the doctrine of final causes ...

" The explanation is manifest on the theory of the natural selection of successive slight modifications,—each modification being profitable in some way to the modified form, but often affecting by correlation of growth other parts of the organization. In changes of this nature, there will be little or no tendency to modify the original pattern, or to transpose parts. The bones of a limb might be shortened and widened to any extent, and become gradually enveloped in thick membrane, so as to serve as a fin; or a webbed foot might have all its bones, or certain bones lengthened to any extent, and the membrane connecting them increased to any extent so as to serve as a wing: yet in all this amount of modification there will be no tendency to alter the framework of bones, or the relative connexion of the several parts. If we suppose that the ancient progenitor, the archetype, as it may be called, of all mammals, had its limbs constructed on the existing general pattern, for whatever purpose they served, we can at once perceive the plain signification of the homologous construction of the limbs throughout the whole class. So of the months of insects, we have only to suppose that their common progenitor had an upper lip, mandibles, and two pair of maxillas, these parts, perhaps, being very simple in form; and then natural selection will account for the infinite diversity in structure and function of the mouths of insects ....

" There is another and equally curious branch of the present subject: namely, the comparison not of the same part in different members of a class, but of the different parts or organs in the same individuals. Most physiologists believe that the bones of the skull are homologous with—that is, correspond in number and in relative connection with—the elemental parts of a certain number of vertebra. The anterior and posterior limbs in each member of the vertebrate and articulate classes, are plainly homologous. We see the same law in comparing the wonderfully complex jaws and legs in crustaceans. It is familiar to almost every one, that in a flower the relative position of the sepals, petals, stamens, and pistils, as well as their intimate structure, are intelligible on the view that they consist of metamorphosed leaves, arranged in a spire. In monstrous plants, we often get direct evidence of the possibility of one organ being transformed into another; and we can actually see in embryonic crustaceans, and in many other animals, and in flowers, that organs which, when mature, become extremely different, are, at an early stage of growth, exactly alike.

" How inexplicable are these facts on the ordinary view of creation I Why should the brain be enclosed in a box composed of such numerous and such extraordinarily-shaped pieces of bone ? . . . Why should similar bones have been created in the formation of the wing and leg of a bat, used as they are for such totally different purposes ? Why should one crustacean which has an extremely complex mouth formed of many parts, consequently always have fewer legs; or conversely those with many legs have simpler mouths ? Why should the sepals, petals, stamens, and pistils in any individual flower, though fitted for such widely different purposes, be all constructed on the same pattern? " On the theory of natural selection we can satisfactorily answer these questions. In the vertebrata we see a series of internal vertebrae bearing certain processes and appendages ; in the articulata, we see the body divided into a series of segments, bearing external appendages ; and in flowering plants, we see a series of successive spiral whorls of leaves. An indefinite repetition of the same part or organ is the common characteristic of all low or little modified forms; therefore we may readily believe that the unknown progenitor of the vertebrata possessed many vertebrae ; the unknown progenitor of the articulata, many segments; and the unknown progenitor of flowering plants, many spiral whorls of leaves. We have seen that parts many times repeated, are eminently liable to vary in number and structure ; consequently it is quite probable that natural selection, during a long-continued course of modification, should have seized on a certain number of the primordially similar elements, many times repeated, and have adapted them to the most diverse purposes. And as the whole amount of modification will have been effected by slight successive steps, we need not wonder at discovering in such parts or organs a certain degree of fundamental resemblance, retained by the strong principle of inheritance."—Pp. 378-380.

He thus expressly alleges—and there are many parallel passages—that it is in effect an impeachment of the wisdom of the Creator to suppose that he gave the animals in existence the peculiar forms and natures they possess, on the ground that parts of their bodies are unfitted to the sphere in which they live, and useless ; while, on the other hand, he affirms that if those parts are the work of their own self-modifying energies under the conduct of natural selection, then, though useless and unsuited to their sphere of life, their existence is explicable and unexceptionable. But, in the first place, he neither does nor can prove that any of those parts of their structure, to which he objects, are useless, or do not contribute in an important measure to the perfection of the animals in which they exist. He may not indeed see what their use is ; but that is not by any means positively to see that they have no use. There is not an organ or element of an animal body of the functions of which Mr. Darwin or any other naturalist has more than a very slight and vague apprehension. His objection is thus founded on an assumption which he is unable to prove. In the next place : If it were admitted that those parts are not directly useful to the animals in which they occur, as an eye » fur seeing and a foot for walking, the loss of which is the loss of power that is indispensable to the well-being of the animal, still it would not follow that they are not important to give proportion to the structure, and render it easier in its motion, or more graceful to the eye. Mr. Darwin indeed denies this with great earnestness. "Some naturalists," he says, " believe that very many structures have been created for beauty in the eyes of man, or for mere variety. This doctrine, if true, would be absolutely fatal to my theory."—P. 177. But though fatal to his theory, it is indisputable that many objects in the animal and vegetable world have a beauty of form, color, voice, and movement, that gives pleasure to the eye and ear of man. The fact, therefore, that man has a keen sensibility to the beauty of such forms, hues, voices, and motions, and that the shapes, colors, and many other peculiarities of animals and vegetables are such as strike that sensibility and excite pleasure, proves that God created those peculiarities with a reference, at least among other ends, to the pleasure they yield mankind; and making the animal and vegetable world in that manner the means of enjoyment to man, is surely as suitable and honorable to his intelligence and goodness, as the provision of any other means of a natural, pure, and elevated pleasure is. It does little credit to Mr. Darwin's intelligence or taste, that he should doubt that God has acted with any reference to this important susceptibility of our nature ; or that it would be creditable to his beneficence and skill. Thirdly, he furnishes no explanation of the perpetuation of the parts in question, on the supposition that the modifications which he alleges have taken place. He only says that it is " manifest," and the question why it has happened " is satisfactorily answered." But not a whisper of an answer does he give beyond the mere asseveration that if the changes took place by slight successive steps, there would be " no tendency to modify the original pattern ;" when by the supposition the most important modifications of the pattern were wrought, and the whole nature metamorphosed. Would there be no change of pattern in transmuting a black bear to a whale, or a fish with a " swim-bladder" to an eagle with " lungs ?" The pretence of an explanation is a sham. Fourthly, he contradicts his theory of the modifying power, in representing that in working its changes it leaves the animals in question in a condition so inapt and incompatible with their perfection, that it would be discreditable to the Creator by a direct fiat to give them forms encumbered with such useless and unmeaning parts. For he everywhere affirms that the modifying power which works under the tutelage of natural selection, aims exclusively at the improvement of the individuals on whom it exerts itself, and gives birth to no effects but what are beneficial, and advance them to a higher stage of adaptation to their sphere of existence. Yet by his affirmation here, the effect of its operation in these cases is to render parts that were originally beneficial^ useless, and convert them into encumbrances. For if useless, what else can they be but encumbrances that burtheu by their weight, and exhaust by the appropriation to themselves of a part of the vital forces that would otherwise be retained by other parts of the system ? Such is the issue of his attempt to vindicate his theory by impeaching the wisdom of the Almighty, and ascribing to the lowest natures in the animal world a higher measure of intelligence and skill than to him.

Mr. Darwin proceeds throughout in his theory—by implication at least, though perhaps unconsciously—on a worse impeachment of the Most High than even this, and a more preposterous misrepresentation of the nature of animals. For first,nothing can be more certain than that the most important and determinative element in an animal, is its psychical—that is, its perceptive, sensitive, and instinctive nature. It is that which gives to it its character, determines its mode and habits of life, and discriminates it mainly from others. Its body is but the instrument of its conscious nature, and has its peculiar form and powers, because of their adaptation to that nature. Take away its psychical nature from a wolf, and substitute the soul of a lamb in its place, and the being would no longer be a Wolf, nor would it be a lamb. The body would have no adaptation to the conscious agent that animated it; and their incompatibility would doubtless lead to immediate death; as the instincts of the Lamb could not lead it to seek and seize the food that would be required by the constitution of the body ; and the body would not be capable of digesting the food that was suitable to the lamb. And next: nothing can be more certain than that the psychical nature of every animal always acts consistently with itself; that is, it is animated by appetites and desires, it is prompted and guided by instincts, and it exerts acts and pursues a course that is suited to its own peculiar nature; and preserves, gives effect to, and accomplishes the ends of that special nature. It never repudiates its own distinctive characteristics and usurps the appetites, instincts, and habits of a different animal. The wolf is the wolf in all conditions and ages, and nothing else: the lamb is the lamb in all conditions and ages, and nothing else: the fox is the fox. the tiger the tiger, the elephant the elephant, the eagle the eagle, and man man ; and it is because their psychical natures are what they are, that their several bodies are adapted to them, and that each propagates creatures after its own kind.

Now, Mr. Darwin, in his theory, that every race of animals has in a course of ages modified its organic frame, contradicts these great truths, and implies that the psychical natures which God put into the bodies of the originals were unsnited to those bodies, and so unsuited that the vast changes which Mr. D. holds have been wrought in them were requisite in order to their becoming matches for each other. For on no other supposition can such modifications be regarded as possible. If their psychical natures and their.bodies were perfectly matched, they would infallibly have perpetuated themselves unaltered. They could not, from the law of their being, either have wrought any change in themselves by a direct volition, nor given birth to offspring differing from themselves. No animal can, by a mere volition, work a change in its nature. The supposition is absurd : inasmuch as first, it can have no idea of any other than the nature of which it is conscious, to be an object of desire and volition ; and next, because if it could, it has no power to alter its nature. The ground of its existence and all the peculiarities of its internal and external being lie out of itself, in the will of the Creator who gave it existence and upholds it; and it has no more power over them than it has over the nature of any other animal that is wholly disconnected with itself. Mr. Darwin, therefore, in maintaining that every race of animals has wrought a vast revolution in its own body, and made its organism quite unlike what the original from which it has descended was, virtually assumes that the psychical nature of its original was essentially unsuited to the body in which it was put. This is indeed directly indicated on his last page, in the intimation that perhaps all the psychical entities that were created, were originally placed in one and the same form. His theory accordingly is, that each perceptive, sensitive, and instinctive nature demanded fundamental changes in its body, and that the changes in it which he holds have taken place, have been wrought in order to bring its body to a more perfect adaptation to its interior nature. And had he openly given this as his theory, he would only have presented, in a more simple and direct form, the principle or postulate on which his whole speculation in fact proceeds. Let him admit that the psychical natures of the originals from which all present animals have descended, were put into bodies that were perfectly adapted to them, and he will be obliged to admit that no reason can have existed to the animals for a change of their nature, and that no power has existed either in them or in the conditions in which they were placed, to work any modifications of their natures. The wolf would infallibly continue to be the wolf, and the lamb the lamb, the dove the dove, the vulture the vulture, and man man. His theory is thus a direct impeachment of the wisdom and goodness of God ; as it charges that instead of making his creatures perfect, or good in their kinds, he made them all monsters, so ill-matched in the two parts of their being that they were obliged to work a radical modification of their bodies in order to adapt them to the necessities of their psychical natures. What can be more unworthy of a man endowed with the fine gifts of Mr. Darwin than to spend his life in endeavoring to build up a vast system of speculation on such a postulate, and dignify it with the name of science !

It misrepresents the creature also as grossly as it does God. No truth is more self-evident than that a being that is derived, the ground of whose existence accordingly does not lie in itself, but in an exterior cause, cannot alter its own substantive nature. For as its existence is the work of a cause exterior to itself, and thence its existing as such a substantive entity as it is must be the work of that cause, it is intuitively clear that its nature, at every stage of its existence, must be what that external cause wills it to be, and that it cannot itself have any power to modify or determine its psychical or bodily nature. They are as absolutely out of its jurisdiction as the natures of any other existences are; and are the work only of God, who upholds them from moment to moment, with identically the natures that belong to them. Of this great truth, however, Mr. Darwin takes no cognizance. Instead of contemplating the universe as in its minutest parts a resistless proof of the presence, every moment, and activity of the Creator, because, if left for an instant without his upholding power, it would sink into non- existence ; he sees in it nothing but dead or organized matter, and speculates about it as though it were a selfsubsistence, and especially as though its organized and living forms owed their nature and the perpetuation of their kinds from generation to generation altogether to powers that belong independently to themselves. He is accordingly extremely irreligious and untheistic. He does not indeed directly attack or deny the revelation God has made in his word, nor does he recognise it, but he builds his system on postulates that imply the rejection of the Scriptures, and will naturally lead those who accede to his theory to their rejection. If the race from which man has descended has existed on the earth for millions of millions of ages, as he maintains, what can be more plain than that the sacred writings, which represent him as having subsisted here only about six thousand years, and trace his genealogy and history through that whole period, are a fiction ? If man is but a metamorphosed animal, as he implies, perhaps an insect, a fish, a bird, a quadruped, what can be more certain than that he cannot from the beginning have been, as revelation represents, a subject of moral government, and fallen at the first stage of his life by a revolt from his Maker ? What can be more certain than that the first progenitor cannot have been a representative of the whole race, differing, as the theory implies, most essentially in their nature at different periods, and involved them in sin and death by his fall ? For what greater solecism can be conceived than that an insect, a fish, a bird, a four-footed beast, should, by its unintelligent and irresponsible act, give birth to such an infinite train of moral consequences? If the race were originally animals, and had no representative head, neither were under a moral government, nor fell, what can be more indubitable than that they cannot at least universally need redemption from sin ; that the Son of God cannot have become their representative head, and died for their expiation ? The whole revelation contained in the Scriptures, the work of redemption, the future existence of the mind, and all that faith in God cherishes, falls, on Mr. Darwin's theory, and vanishes from our grasp. Man is made a mere fellow of the brutes, with little else to distinguish him than that he is capable of perceiving that his nature is a mockery, and feeling the bitterness of foreseeing that his noblest gifts, his loftiest aspirations, his purest hopes, are in a few moments to sink into extinction, and nought but nothingness and oblivion remain for ever. Mr. D.'s work is accordingly as unfriendly to man as it is unjust to God. It can only darken and demoralize just in proportion as its principles are accepted and its doctrines prevail.

Citation:

The Theological and Literary Journal

edited by David N. Lord.

Vol. XIII.

July, 1860—April, 1861.

New York: Published by Franklin Knight, 1861

Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

Art. V. [p. 101] —Darwin On The Origin Of Species.

On The Origin Of Species By Means Of Natural Selection; or, the Preservation of favored Races in the Struggle of Life. By Charles Darwin, M.A., Fellow of the Royal, Geological, Linnsean, etc., Societies, author of Journal of Researches during H.M.S. Beagle's voyage round the world. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1860.

continuation of dialogue between awake and Hesperado

2009-08-24T21:24:00.001-07:00

The dialogue thickens:

[awake's comments + his quotes of me from a previous comment in plain text; my new responses in bold indicated by the html codes ]

Hesp:
"For a sociopolitical movement that depends greatly upon ideas, history and research & presentation of texts, such disregard for veracity and exactness of important historical quotes is ludicrous and juvenile."

Assertion based on your opinion. You have not argued why it is ludicrous or juvenile, even though you admittted that in substance and import, it is not that big a deal.

As to the second part of your characterization of what I "admitted", I already explained above what I meant, and I made no such admission. As to the first part, first of all, what you are asking for is tantamount to challenging someone who makes the assertion that "pleasure is good" to explain it, as though it actually needs explaining. Such a request is so out of the norm as to be bizarre. I can't imagine anyone -- other than perhaps an Appalachian farmer or a glue-sniffing teenager or a ghetto rapper -- disputing that a sociopolitical movement needs to provide accurate quotations of the historical sources it uses for its war of ideas (of course, they wouldn't put their dispute that way: they'd just spurn it with a spit off to the side, thus perhaps more eloquently than your equivalent). As an abstract philosophical exercise, it has value, I suppose, in some remedial Socratic sense, but in this context, it is egregious. Nevertheless, I will try to accomodate you.

Consider the minimum standards for primary source quotes in scholarly journals, books, theses and other academic presentations. They require reference citations to the original -- primary sources, not secondary. They require complete citations, including title, publishers, editors, date, page and/or volume number. This is required so that if the wording is disputed, the person disputing it can go back and check to see if that really was the correct quote or not. Why is the wording important? Because historiography is built upon records and documents, mostly of what people wrote and what people were reported to have said. Historiography depends upon preserving the exact original wording, for if the tinkering and the negligent transcription and the faulty memory begins and no one is concerned about it, it will go on to escalate and more and more primary sources will be corrupted. What began as a possibly relatively minor difference in wording can morph into differences that actually change the meaning in serious ways, even reverse the meaning sometimes. This isn't merely a scholarly concern. Any good high school teacher wouldn't accept a history paper from a student where the student claimed to quote George Washington, but only guess at what Washington said, and then when asked where he got that quote would tell the teacher he got it from some blog on the Internet.

Now, a sociopolitical movement is different from Academe in many ways. And with regard to use of sources, there is no official arbiter of standards of a sociopolitical movement, as there is in Academe. Heck, a sociopolitical movement can do what it likes: its members could decide that the historical quotes it uses for its ongoing education of both members and the general public it is trying to persuade can be reproduced willy-nilly, with no care at all for their accuracy. "Just put in something about Jefferson hating Islam -- we know he did; I know I heard it from someone I trust that it's in some book somewhere. Who cares what Jefferson actually said about it?" Well, it matters if anyone comes along disputing that he did say that, or disputes that even if he said something that seems like hating Islam, that he really meant the same interpretation this movement is claiming he meant.

Interestingly, I noticed that you are highly concerned about challenging me for an argument about this particular opinion I have -- namely, that "disregard for veracity and exactness of important historical quotes is ludicrous and juvenile" -- but you seem completely unconcerned with challenging a closely related opinion I had -- namely, that "Although the variances do not terribly affect the substance and import, they do affect the veracity if no one cares to provide the actual citation of the correct version." In fact, apparently, you simply agree with that opinion and have found it very useful, though you misunderstand it, as I've already explained. In fact, I could be wrong -- maybe the meaning is changed by the variances. Who's going to check? Who cares? Now all of a sudden you guys are going to take my word on something?

Closely related to the above, we have the problem of a tendency to behave a certain way evidenced by the way this quote has been handled. Even if the variances pertaining to the Jefferson quote could be demonstrated to everyone's satisfaction to have zero effect on the substance and import, there will come along other quotes of similar importance which, when run through the mill of this sloppy transmission process, will not fare so well, and important meanings of phrases will be changed, if not sometimes reversed. If a very important quote by Thomas Jefferson that reveals a juicy admission by a Muslim ambassador is handled in this cavalier way, other quotes are likely to suffer as well. So, sure, any given sociopolitical movement can have lax standards about the quotes it uses in its pedagogy and persuasion, but that doesn't make that a good situation. At any rate, I'm not advocating some kind of herculean transformation of the Anti-Islam Movement that will bog everyone down with gigantic labors. At the very least, when somebody comes along like me who has taken the time and trouble to nail down this important historical quote, use me, for crying out loud! I won't even expect to get paid, nor even do I expect gratitude! Just use the damn quote! This will hardly put anyone's nose out of joint -- though apparently the gall of having to swallow one's pride amounts to an immense obstacle in this regard.

Hesp:
"There is absolutely no reason to resist accuracy with regard to the Anti-Islam Movement's use of historical texts -- and certainly no reason to get all piqued and huffy against someone who calls attention to any inaccuracies that may be perpetuated by one or more members of the Movement.

To have provided the actual quote, and to do so that is not consistent with your theme that, "Spencer should keep his day job" as far as an analyst of the solution to the Islam problem, as opposed to merely reporting on it as relayed through the hundreds of articles you wrote which are critical of him, is perfectly acceptable.

Huh? I read your paragraph above 3 times and couldn't understand it. You'll have to paraphrase it -- but remember to keep the substance and import approximately the same.

"The fact that I have to point this out once, let alone more than once, is screamingly insane."

Another assertion based on your original assertion without evidence. It is not in itself, insane, nor is it "screamingly" so.

Yes. Hopefully my attempt at an argument above will have clarified it.

Ironic it is, that you find specific egregious fault with Marisol, and by extension, Spencer on the exactitude of this Jefferson quote. It is ironic to criticize a person who has demonstrated over the years, arguments based meticulously on the accuracy of his statements from historical texts and statements, though he is routinely accused of taking these statements out of context by his detractors.

Well, the irony is more on the side of my accusers in this case, since they are the ones supposed to show concern for meticulousness, but here show no concern for it and even get mad at me for providing the information that meticulousness yields -- unless (and I wouldn't put it past you) you are trying to argue that if Spencer is meticulous about 10 different quotes, he doesn't need to be meticulous about the 11th quote and nobody dare point out that 11th quote!

Hesp:
"If there is a perception afoot that I occupy such a position (by self-promotion of course, in the terms of this perception, and not by merit nor need), it might well have something to do with the unfortunate, and rather strange, fact that no one else seems to care about these matters."

It may well be, but that is just another assertion. You have not argued why Spencer needs what you deem, your continuous corrective criticism...

Sure I have, dozens of times on my now retired blog, and at least a couple of times on my present blog. It's a simple principle really: if someone has constructive criticism, then that will help the object of that criticism if it's integrated. This is a separate issue from whether any particular constructive criticism really is constructive or not. The determination of that should have nothing to do with emotion, animosity, paranoia, and other extraneous factors. And, of course, the object of the criticism can also choose to just ignore the crticism -- perhaps he feels he doesn't have the time to read it to determine if it's useful; perhaps he doesn't like the guy giving it; whatever. But that doesn't mean the critic should stop criticizing. And it certainly doesn't substitute for actually making the determination of whether, or not, any given criticism proferred by the critic is, in fact, constructive and therefore beneficial. The attitude of you and some others in this regard is tantamount to saying: "We don't like the way your are criticizing us, and it smacks to us of destructive not constructive criticism -- therefore that's what it is: destructive criticism. Begone!" Ridiculous, when not indicative of a tyrannical spirit.

...nor why his refusal to hearken to you to date has adversely affected his position in the movement.

That would be extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, to prove. Too many variables. Also, his "position in the movement" is not the only concern. There is the continual refinement and betterment of various aspects of the movement -- and again the determination of whether any of my suggestions would conduce to that has to be made on the merits of their substance, not on extraneous matters.

You have also not explained this supposed unfortunate, rather strange behavior, which lead you to your unsubstantiated conclusion that in the absence of you holding this self-promotional perception, seemingly no one else cares about these matters.

The proof is in the pudding. As far as I know and if you know of one please enlighten me: Nobody else has shown that they were bothered by these discrepancies in the Jefferson quote in the first place. Nobody else has shown that they were inspired by this concern to take time and trouble to track down the original quote. Nobody else has shown the additional effort of publishing a meticulous analysis of their efforts. Nobody else has dared to poke their head into the lion's den at Jihad Watch to risk getting their head snapped off by Marisol shouting "How dare you presume to tell us what to do with your vile vinegar! Next time thou durst so, doest so on bended knee with a jar of honey! In the meantime, we shall ignore thy vinegary presumption!" [Slam door to end one-sided discussion on this subject for apparently ever; enter the court jester awake to take over from here.]

I will make a counter-argument that Spencer continuously refutes attacks upon him by specifically pointing out his words and the sources behind them with particular detail for their exactness in accuracy. There are hundreds upon hundres of articles here at JW validating that argument.

Yes he does indeed. So what's the argument: if Spencer does it 100 times, it's okay if he doesn't do it the 101st time? And the 102nd time (re: my repeated mentions in JW comments fields of the more crucial variance in the 'Umdat al-Salik, of course ignored from on high as though Zeus himself were non-existent)? And the 103rd time? Or perhaps we can make this easy with a simple rule: "Only ignore it when Hesperado pipes up with his hobbyhorses!"

Hesp:
"Any stance would require a majority at least (and unanimity of course best of all) to be successful."

If you acknowledge that your holistic position is in the minority "within the anti-Islam movement, woops, I mean anti-Jihad movement", then why not cease and desist the continuous criticism of the asymptotic analysts who make up the majority in the movement?

Because in certain instances, I think I have a better way, and it's my right to put my foot into the arena and articulate it. If I persuade some folks, great; if I don't, well, at least I tried. Why am I having to explain excruciatingly common-sensical bromides to you, anyway? Can't you figure some of this stuff out yourself?

Hesp:
"While I grant that in this particular instance, there cannot really be a synthesis of the two stances (holistic and asymptotic), and no real compromise that wouldn't cramp the style of either the one or the other stance, I do not hold the position, in general principle, that I or any other "holist" has to require of all asymptotics that they change, or else they are deemed to be excommunicated from the Movement."

You are entitled to your opinion about the superiority of your holistic stance, but you have not successfully argued and substantiated that assertion as superior in any way.

I have to one or two people. At any rate, a "successful" argument is not necessarily a good argument; nor is an "unsuccessful" argument necessarily a bad one.

Speaking of ex-communication, Spencer is firmly entrenched in the movement. You on the otherhand, are not, nor are any true holistic analysts. That is just a fact.

And therefore? I have a bigger car and a pretty wife, therefore I'm better than you?

...one wonders from both you and Cornelius whether anonymity would be just fine with you guys as long as the anonymous person was.... in lockstep agreement with Spencer...?

No need to wonder. I assert that Spencer, because he is public, has a greater concern of and responsibility for his words and deeds that anonymous bloggers do not.

That can be a fact that can support an argument for the superiority of anonymous bloggers on one level at least -- they have the freedom to say things that a non-anonymous blogger is inhibited from saying.

I have disagreed with Robert in the past, and I believe Cornelius is in staunch disagreement with Hugh about Iraq, but there is a not so subtle distinction between respectful disagreement and petty, unyielding criticism.

I agree: there is a distinction between respectful disagreement and petty, unyielding criticism. The challenge then would be to demonstrate that my criticism is petty. I wouldn't fault unyielding criticism necessarily, though perhaps it's a semantic thing -- what one man calls persistent another might call unyielding.

Remember, you dedicated a full year plus criticizing Spencer, and JW, yet oddly, you are still here, criticizing Spencer on almost every thread...

That's an exaggeration. I just did a survey of the August archives (though I had to stop past halfway through due to the increased slowness of my computer dealing with such a massive page studded with YouTube videos):

Of the last 23 threads in which I had any comments at all, only two had directly critical things to say about Spencer, Jihad Watch itself, Marisol or Hugh -- this one, and the one where I posted a couple of comments wondering why Spencer has not yet integrated the crucial translation of the 'Umdat al-Salik with regard to clitorectomy. Otherwise, I did not count the "English pub" comment I made which did not mention Spencer, Jihad Watch itself, Marisol or Hugh, but only mentioned certain critiques about the conduct of the Anti-Islam Movement as reflected by the comment made by one of Spencer's hosts in England that reflected important "tensions" among the anti-jihadists behind the scenes to which we out-of-the-loopers seem never to be privy (certainly I've rarely seen anyone write up anything about them). I also did not count the recent thread where I very politely and obliquely registered my different view on whether Islam has, or has not, an "ethical dimension". Similarly, another thread I did not count was where I respectully offered a suggestion for Spencer to use in debates with Muslims like Bassouiani:

While Spencer's exchange with Bassiouni revealed that Bassiouni exposed himself to blatant inconsistency, I think Spencer could have skewered him with his own petard even more effectively had Spencer limited his first reply to the one point of the inconsistency itself and say nothing else, and in a final sentence say "Please answer this one point". With no other points from Spencer in view, Bassiouni would have no choice but to answer it or not answer it -- with the latter option more starkly exposed for being unresponsive.

Anyone who would construe that as anything but respectful and unpetty has their little heart monitor set on paranoid.

The "Comments Are Open!" thread involved a long exchange between myself and Cornelius which I tried to keep on the track of my initial criticism of his universal censure of the word "subhuman" but he steered it around to all my faults, including my criticisms of Spencer. I can hardly be faulted for standing up for myself there, and it certainly cannot be counted as one more example of me going into a thread mischievously to inject my little Spencer bombs.

At worst, if one insists on counting the "English pub" one, that would make 3 out of 23. It also needs to be mentioned that some of those 20 remaining have more than one comment by me, none of them jabs at Spencer, Jihad Watch itself, Marisol or Hugh. And furthermore, there are many threads among those 23 where I didn't register any comments at all. Thus your characterization -- "criticizing Spencer on almost every thread" -- seems to be grossly inaccurate.

Hesp:
"About #2, on one level you're right, I "accept nothing less than my personal view as acceptable" -- but only on the level on which anyone who has a stance about anything that they believe in does not "accept" the controversion of that stance."

That seems to contradict your previous statement about "asymptotic" analysts, their need to convert or else face excommunication...

I said the opposite. Go back and re-read.

Hesp:
"I was thinking more of your perception of me. I don't think Spencer lowers himself to that level, though he did once preposterously anathematize and excommunicate me, in so many words, from the Movement. As much as I have criticized this or that aspect of his methodology, I have never seen fit to anathematize and excommunicate him."

Simple answer, you cannot excommunicate Spencer.

That doesn't matter. If a person wants to kill someone, does it make it okay that he can't kill that person? Conversely, if someone wants to kill and actually does, is he better because he has the power to kill, better than the other person who neither has the power to kill, nor who wants to? If excommunication reflects poorly on the excommunicator (unless you revere power for the sake of power), then there's no way to salvage Spencer in this context.

When I spoke of you craving public recognition, I was referring to your vast archives complaining about the "gentleman's agreement" and how you are left out,

Show me one line from those essays that indicates I'm complaining about being left out personally in the way you are implying.

and referring to yourself as treated like a lesser paeon in the eyes of other larger luminaries in the movement.

Again, show me one line from those essays that indicates I am complaining personally about being a peon the way you are implying. All the concerns and complaints in those essays are couched in terms of the betterment of the overall movement. Your extrapolation from that to a merely personal ego problem on my part is pure conjecture, without evidence, and dripping with unfair malice.

And also, desiring that Spencer "deputize" and allow others to write at JW, like yourself. It doesn't take long to discover your personal frustration in this movement.

Again, I challenge you to produce any evidence from those essays that demonstrates these spins you have placed upon them -- namely, that what I "really" care about is one thing -- the egotistical pitiful personal resentment and assuaging that -- while what I am claiming to care about -- the betterment of the movement is pretense masking the lower motivations.

Hesp:
"At any rate, that bit of imaginative rendering of mine was hyperbole, and one needn't go comically down into the gutter to indulge in the freaking weird option of impugning someone's essence and character because you don't like their ideas, or fixating on their behavior, while spending less time, if any, on the actual ideas they are communicating."

Pot, meet kettle.

I don't impugn Spencer's essence or character. I criticize aspects of his approach, his methodology, his ideas. No pot here.

Anyway, you are a holist who believes all Muslims are potentially evil

I never put it that way. All Muslims who support Islam are evil. All Muslims who passively enable Islam by continuing to be Muslims are co-dependent enablers of the evil of Islam. Among the latter may be many who are harmless and more or less nice people, but we have the pragmatic problem (which Spencer has agreed several times is a major problem though he has not logically unfolded it) of not being able to distinguish with sufficient reliability the dangerous from the harmless. But you should remember this, from the 101 times I've told you this before.

and that Islam needs to be abolished in totality

I've never said Islam needs to be abolished in totality -- I've argued more than once at length for an indefinite co-existence structured by global quarantine militarily enforced, preceded by total deportation.

is irreformable and ultimately evil to the core, with the rounding up and expulsion of all Muslims from the West, a minimal pre-requisite, only inhibited by the malaise of PCMC currently.

This part is ok, with one major exception: the rounding up and expulsion of all Muslims I don't characterize as a "minimal" pre-requisite, but rather the maximum pre-requisite we can do. There are plenty of other more or less half-assed measures we can take short of that that may, or may not, help, though I continue to maintain they will in the end help less, and possibly cause much more of a mess than the holistic approach.

Did I miss anything?

Yeah, most of it.

A valid opinion, but not one warranting your continued criticism of Spencer, that's for sure.

That one opinion, concerning ultimate management of the problem of Islam, is only one facet of the many other different ongoing concerns and difficulties of the Anti-Islam Movement.

Transcript of Discussion between Cornelius and Hesperado

2009-08-24T08:56:00.000-07:00

From the Jihad Watch comments thread of the Comments Are Open! article.

Note: the author's name of any particular comment comes at the end of his comment. The following extraction preserves one other commenter's comments, "Davegreybeard", since he became part of the discussion toward the end. Also preserved are a couple of comments Cornelius made to others toward the beginning of the transcript.

Also note: One problem that seems to recur in the responses of Cornelius to me is his misapprehension of what I am writing, and therefore often of my actual positions distinct from his straw men of them. A second problem is his inability to defend certain claims with sufficient argumentation -- most notably, his claim that the Spencer quote is not sophistry. A third problem appears near the very beginning, where Cornelius tries to have his cake and eat it too, re: objecting universally to the use of the term "subhuman" as applied in any sense to Muslims by Jihad Watchers, while at the same time when nailed down to face certain Muslim behavior that is arguably "subhuman" (beheading three Indonesian girls, as I cited) he appeals to a delimitation of his stricture as only applying to when the term paints all Muslims with a broad brush. When I pointed out that by his own words he had already transgressed that delimitation by objecting to the term in any circumstance whether limited to a few Muslims or applying to all Muslims, he never responded. This dialogical behavior is indicative of Cornelius's approach, and provides insight into why his later more complex exchanges with me broke down on the back of poor argumentation and logic on his part, with emotionality escalating in proportion to logic diminishing.

Here follows the transcript:

Roxane,

I really DO get your point. I've often been amazed at the extent to which Charles Johnson over at LGF obsesses over the ideological purity of the anti-Jihad and the conservative movement, rather than concentrating on the evil perpetrated by the Islamo/Left.

Unlike Johnson, I don't give a damn about creationists, or whether or not a Belgian nationalist once attended a far-right book show. Like you, I care about fighting and winning against our real enemies.

But I'm an individualist. I march to the beat of my own drum, and I answer to the call of my own conscience. I choose carefully with whom I associate and why....and I'm certainly not going to fight one sociological evil by embracing another (even if, as you rightly point out, their respective threats to humankind bear no resemblance).

I simply can't countenance expressions like "sub-human" when referring to other human beings. Right or wrong, it's just the way I'm wired. But you and Mrs J are certainly right, it's not for me to tell others what they can or can't say; that's up to the webmasters here.

It's just now dawning on me that perhaps my time here at JW is coming to a close. I've tried - not always successfully - to avoid the inclination to just vent, and have made the effort to offer up positions - sometimes controversial - that stimulate discussion and the search for solutions. I've enjoyed my episodic discourse with Hugh, even allowing for the occasional acrimony.

Most of all, I cherish the work of Robert Spencer, who provides us with an example that I myself just don't have the internal fortitude to follow; someone who has put himself out on the front lines of this struggle without the comfort and safety of anonymity. The man is an inspiration.

Posted by: Cornelius [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 16, 2009 10:46 AM

Cornelius,

When Muslim human beings, in seeking to do "something good for Ramadan", behead three little Indonesian girls and toss their headless bodies in a ditch, those Muslim human beings have effectively become subhumans.

Posted by: Hesperado [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 16, 2009 12:33 PM

MrsJ,

"if someone is acting in an evil way, wouldn't it then follow that they are, in fact, evil?"

I would expand that to include all those who continue to support the system through which those who act evil derive their inspiration and their enablement to do those evil acts -- i.e., effectively all Muslims who support Islam (and what Muslims don't support Islam? and how would we know they really don't?).

Posted by: Hesperado [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 16, 2009 12:53 PM

Cornelius,

I agree with you and with Josephine. Calling people "subhuman" and "cockroaches" etc. is obviously (to some of us, anyways) unacceptable in the realm of intelligent and ethical discourse, and only hurts the Jihad Watch project and causes headaches for Robert.

Posted by: Kinana of Khaybar [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 16, 2009 1:06 PM

Cornelius,

"of the 1.2 billion Muslims in the world, I'm sure that among them are thousands if not millions who are better human beings than I."

Insofar as all Muslims support the evil, dangerous and grotesquely unjust system Islam, the best of them are at the very least unconscionably ethically negligent, while innumerable others among them are worse to the degree that their passive enablement of that evil, dangerous and unjust system becomes more consciously defined.

Closely related to this ethical problem, we have the strategic problem that the continued enablement by all those hundreds of millions of Muslims of this global system that is increasingly threatening the free world with terrorist plots whose plotters one can reasonably assume are trying their damndest to acquire WMDs of one flavor or another (biological, chemical, radioactive) -- that continued enablement no matter how passive and "ignorant" it might be, nevertheless serves to empower that system and helps to maintain its worldwide reach, its social networking, and its relative respectability as a "world religion" of "moms and pops like the rest of us" -- and thus its dangerousness to us.

So no: of course not: among the total population of Muslims, there are not "thousands if not millions who are better human beings than" you -- even if we assume the best of any individuals among that number, they fail by their support, no matter how passive it might be, of that evil, dangerous, and grotesquely unjust system called Islam.

Posted by: Hesperado [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 16, 2009 1:06 PM

Hesperado,

The quote was not "Muslims who behead Indonesian school-girls are sub-human"...it was "Muslims are sub-human".

...

Posted by: Cornelius [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 16, 2009 2:07 PM

Cornelius,

The quote was not "Muslims who behead Indonesian school-girls are sub-human"...it was "Muslims are sub-human".

I know, but you have gone on to articulate a rejection of the term universally.

Posted by: Hesperado [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 16, 2009 3:31 PM

Cornelius,

I second the comments above of gravenimage.

You and Wellington offer some of the finest, most well thought out and insightful comments that JW has to offer. I’ll bet your fan base here is far larger than either one of you imagine.

Case in point, the “subhuman” quote and your commentary.

Firstly, there is a world of difference between noting subhuman BEHAVIOR as opposed to classifying a whole category of human beings as “subhuman” – some here seem confused at the distinction.

Secondly, the act of classifying a group of people as “subhuman” and the connection back to the Third Reich is right on target. By definition “subhuman” is irredeemable.

It is this classification of the Jews by the Nazis that gave them license to commit all manner of horrors, among them genocide and using them as “lab rats” for medical experimentation.

So I wonder if anyone here, after careful reflection on the comments above, really feels it is justified to classify all Muslims as “subhuman”. Are they really all irredeemable?

Many brave and articulate apostates prove otherwise.

Hang in there buddy, there are a few of us out here with our own drums also.

Posted by: Davegreybeard [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 16, 2009 10:30 PM

Davegreybeard,

"Firstly, there is a world of difference between noting subhuman BEHAVIOR as opposed to classifying a whole category of human beings as “subhuman” – some here seem confused at the distinction."

Cornelius himself confused them. He wrote:

"I have a problem with the word "sub-human" in ANY context."

So he is ruling out the legitimacy even of speaking of subhuman behavior.

Posted by: Hesperado [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 16, 2009 11:29 PM

Dave,

...

It's not only the use of dehumanizing words like "sub-human"...it's people who are so ideologically rigid that they've branded me MC/PC (a very real insult in my world-view) because I happen to support Iranians demonstrating against their oppressive government...and Muslim moderates in Algeria and elsewhere fighting to the death against Sharia groups. There is a mindset here that is uncompromisingly antagonistic to every Muslim in existence, regardless of their words and deeds. I don't happen to feel that it's realistic and/or helpful in furthering our ultimate goals.

But I don't take for granted that I couldn't be the one who is wrong on this. I just need some time to work it through in my head.

Posted by: Cornelius [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 17, 2009 5:34 AM

Cornelius wrote:

"It's not only the use of dehumanizing words like "sub-human"...it's people who are so ideologically rigid that they've branded me MC/PC (a very real insult in my world-view) because I happen to support Iranians demonstrating against their oppressive government...and Muslim moderates in Algeria and elsewhere fighting to the death against Sharia groups."

As far as I remember, I was the only one who complained about not only Cornelius, but most others here for supporting the Noble Iranian People who Are Muslims and Who follow Mousavi the Evil Snake But Who Happen to Wear Blue Jeans So They Must Be All Right.

I.e., as far as I could tell, the majority here at JW were on Cornelius's side! If anyone should start feeling depressed about JW and need to take time out to "think", it would be ME, not Cornelius!!!

Posted by: Hesperado [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 17, 2009 8:35 PM

Well buddy, maybe you SHOULD take some time to think. I've been reading your blog today...and came across "DAMN" among other things.

You blast Robert for advocating something with little chance of success...a clarion call for Muslims to repudiate the worst features of their doctrine...and then you go on to advocate something even less remote. You actually believe the US government can be prevailed upon to begin rounding up all the Muslims in the USA - citizens and non-citizens alike - and forcibly deport them?...(I assume this includes Black Muslims who are native to this country)?

You actually believe this is a realistic proposal?

At least Robert's clarion call for repudiation, however unlikely to resonate among the enemy, carries a moral message that won't be lost on the fair-minded. Were he to share in your advocacy of a medieval mass expulsion, he would disappear into the great din of inconsequentiality (where you and I reside, my friend) and forfeit the impact he's currently having in the world with his almost daily appearances at universities, seminars, in the media, etc.

I give you kudos for even attempting to find solutions to incredibly vexing problems...and I don't necessarily object to them out of ethical considerations. It's their implausibility that makes them borderline comical.

Who knows though, historical processes can be accelerated by circumstance. I don't discount the possibility that there may come a day after some mega-terror event, when your mass-explusion scheme may become conventional wisdom. Should it happen, we'll all celebrate you as a visionary.

Until then, I'll offer some unsolicited but constructive criticism...I'd consider going back to the drawing board if I were you (which is, by the way, what I'm about to undertake).

Posted by: Cornelius [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 17, 2009 9:42 PM

should read: "more remote"

Posted by: Cornelius [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 17, 2009 9:47 PM

Cornelius,

Before you go back to your “drawing board” I cannot help but offer some unsolicited observations and opinions of my own.

I believe we are on course to a worldwide conflict, quite possibly as horrendous and bloody as WW II – except it will last far longer. As with all conflicts of such magnitude there will come brutal murder and atrocities - on both sides. We have seen the blood lust flow strong in our enemy, but we are not immune from this fever. As you have noted, if you watch and listen very carefully, you can see its beginnings – ever so faintly.

So once again our fragile ship of civilization is about to sail into the maelstrom. If we are to prevail, a brave and stalwart crew is needed on deck to deal with the furry of the storm. Yet more is required to prevail or all will be lost – moral ballast, to right our craft when a heavy blow “rounds her down”. Those that provide this ballast must be just as unyielding and clear of purpose as the frenzied crew above.

Posted by: Davegreybeard [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 17, 2009 10:45 PM

Cornelius,

"You blast Robert for advocating something with little chance of success...a clarion call for Muslims to repudiate the worst features of their doctrine...and then you go on to advocate something even less remote. You actually believe the US government can be prevailed upon to begin rounding up all the Muslims in the USA - citizens and non-citizens alike - and forcibly deport them?...(I assume this includes Black Muslims who are native to this country)?

You actually believe this is a realistic proposal?"

I've already integrated that problem into my arguments on my blog. I don't claim to be infallible or omniscient, but I have taken the trouble to present an argument, and expect those who take issue with it to present actual counter-arguments, rather than heaving emotional boulders of polemics.

"At least Robert's clarion call for repudiation, however unlikely to resonate among the enemy, carries a moral message that won't be lost on the fair-minded."

I've also addressed the problem of the moral dimension.

"Were he to share in your advocacy of a medieval mass expulsion, he would disappear into the great din of inconsequentiality (where you and I reside, my friend) and forfeit the impact he's currently having in the world with his almost daily appearances at universities, seminars, in the media, etc."

While I grant he has a toehold on the edges of the mainstream, he is not inside, and unfortunately in our sociopolitical world, that's all that counts.

However, as I have also argued on my blog -- even if he incrementally, over the next decade or two, inches his way closer inside the outer margin of the mainstream and climbs up to a place slightly less damned than, say, Ann Coulter, this still raises the problem of what will be happening during the meantime -- millions more Muslims relocating within the West, while the West is with achingly slow readjustment coming around to listen to Spencer: this will change the problem from what we have now: if at that point the West begins to entertain the mild measures recommended by Spencer, it will be a bandaid against a raging limb needing amputation. And in fact, such half-assed measures taken at that point will likely serve to inflame the increased millions of Muslims within the West and cause even more potential for violence, riots, insurrections, more terrorist attacks including random sudden jihad syndromes -- and as a consequence measures we will have to take which will make my D.A.M.N. seem downright humane.

Better, I say, for us to work for the more logical reconfiguration for the long-term, rather than the half-assed one that remains incoherent and sincerely "ethical" but bloody reckless.

Posted by: Hesperado [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 17, 2009 11:26 PM

Dave,

You're presupposing that we'll go out with a bang and not a whisper. I make no such assumption.

But this is one more reason I need some space from Jihadwatch (and I'm not referring to you here)...I'm weary of the literal eagerness so many at JW have for a cataclysmic show-down with Islam. I'd surely rather fight than surrender, but the ideal solution is not world war, but to facilitate revolutionary change in the Islamic world, by any and all means at our disposal.

My argument with the appeasers is even more pronounced. Their mistake is not that they want peace per se, but that their solution, the continued mass validation of Islam as a belief system, is in fact the greatest IMPEDIMENT to the long-sought but elusive societal reformation the Islamic world so desperately needs. I'm not suggesting here that Islam as a religion can be reformed. Our challenge is to help Islamic societies evolve away from the literalism that is at the core of its dysfunctionality.

It's an improbable outcome, but certainly no less so than suggestions that we quarantine the Muslim world (at a time when we're still dependent on fossil fuels and with non-Muslim entities like China, Russia and the EU eager to fill the void created by our departure)...and medieval mass expulsion schemes that will likely betray our own constitutional prerogatives and possibly bring about a civil war.

Don't get me wrong...I'd be pleased to see the Muslims go, every last one of them, but I just don't think there's a chance in hell it will ever happen.

Hesperado,

You're basically saying that lessor solutions won't even get under way until it's too late demographically, so let's advocate the most extreme solution now, with the expectation that when things finally implode, the groundwork will have been laid. An interesting theory, but one I can't subscribe to, simply because of its implausibility.

And however insignificant you may believe Robert Spencer's position is in the realm of mainstream respectability, I happen to feel he's making a very real splash, reaching young minds at the university level, enlightening government security experts, law enforcement officials and even military planners, and occasionally appearing on Foxnews to reach the uninitiated.

Finally, the moral question involved is not necessarily geared to Muslims (although that is a component). As things stand today in our own sociological environment, advocating mass expulsion schemes is a one-way ticket to political oblivion. We need Robert where he is.

Again, kudos for your efforts. Keep burning the oil, but I urge you to at least ponder alternatives. Realistically, your plan has little chance of ever being implemented. A mind as logical as yours surely must be entertaining a plan B.

Cornelius

Posted by: Cornelius [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 18, 2009 7:23 AM

Cornelius wrote:

"...the ideal solution is not world war, but to facilitate revolutionary change in the Islamic world, by any and all means at our disposal."

Such a revolution would be the bloodiest, messiest and most dangerous revolution in the history of the world.

Posted by: Hesperado [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 18, 2009 11:55 AM

Cornelius also wrote:

"It's an improbable outcome, but certainly no less so than suggestions that we quarantine the Muslim world (at a time when we're still dependent on fossil fuels and with non-Muslim entities like China, Russia and the EU eager to fill the void created by our departure)..."

I don't envision the West being willing to set mass deportation in motion until at least 50 years go by, but probably not before 100 years. By then, the fossil fuel problem re: dependence upon Muslim oil, will have likely been solved.

"...and medieval mass expulsion schemes that will likely betray our own constitutional prerogatives..."

Not if the danger is perceived as great enough, and having certain unique features that logically require mass expulsion.

"...and possibly bring about a civil war."

That depends upon the state of the public consciousness at that time. It seems likely that if the West will have evolved to a point where mass expulsion is seriously considered as an option, the surrounding public will be largely on board -- with exceptions that always pertain, though not necessarily rising to the threshhold of internecine insurrections. Only 50 years ago, the American public was overwhelmingly supportive of interning American citizens and their public pressure was one factor persuading a slightly grudging FDR to go ahead with that most unremarkably rational decision that was not ruled un-Constitutional then by the Supreme Court, nor ever has been since. The only thing that has changed in the intervening years is that the Supreme Court of Political Correctness has evolved. If such a sea change in consciousness can evolve into mainstream dominance in 50 years, it can devolve in another 50 years or so. And there is every reason to reasonably suppose that various outrageous expressions and actions by Muslims, along the way, will facilitate that devolution, or rather revolution -- revolving back to our former sanity.

Posted by: Hesperado [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 18, 2009 1:08 PM

Cornelius:

"As things stand today in our own sociological environment, advocating mass expulsion schemes is a one-way ticket to political oblivion. We need Robert where he is."

As I've said before, Spencer doesn't have to stand on the rooftops and condemn all Muslims and advocate their mass expulsion. All he has to do is not recommend, nor editorially imply recommendation of, concrete measures that would undermine the evolution toward the mass expulsion policy. I.e., I favor Spencer keeping his day job, which he does excellently, but I do not favor him going out on the moonlighting limb where he's on less secure footing. I think he can do the former without having to do the latter. Indeed, the former is what he does most of the time anyway. His ongoing tack of simply adverting to what is wrong in the Islamic orbit and tending to refrain from making pronouncements upon Islam itself and Muslims qua Muslims is fine -- as long as he consistently sticks to it and doesn't say other things out the other side of his mouth under his second hat that tend to contradict that tack and render his overall analysis incoherent. Unfortunately, he continues to do the latter.

Posted by: Hesperado [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 18, 2009 1:16 PM

CORNELIUS: "...the ideal solution is not world war, but to facilitate revolutionary change in the Islamic world, by any and all means at our disposal."

HESPERADO: "Such a revolution would be the bloodiest, messiest and most dangerous revolution in the history of the world."

RESPONSE: Not necessarily.

Tunisia, for example, has constructed a secular polity without an excess of violence. On the other hand, Algeria's experience has been very bloody. There's just no way to predict how the revolution/evolution of the Islamic world will proceed. But even if you turn out to be right, I'd rather the battleground between modernity and Islam be fought in Dar ul Islam instead of the West.

---------------------------------------------

HESPERADO: "I don't envision the West being willing to set mass deportation in motion until at least 50 years go by, but probably not before 100 years."

RESPONSE: By your own calculations, it may be too late by then. In 50 years, Muslims will have near majorities in France, Spain, Germany, Britain, Belgium and Holland. Under such conditions, it may be the opposite of what you anticipate; the native population will by then in all likelihood be emigrating en mass under duress.

In short, your timetable doesn't bode well for success, at least as it pertains to Europe. The demographic time bomb threatens to overcome the political maturation process you're counting on. By my estimation, the undertaking will have to commence within 20 years to have any hope of success...and you apparently feel they won't be ready.

------------------------------------------------

As for Spencer, I don't think you're allowing for any sort of nuance in his approach, which is - if I may be so bold - what I perceive to be one of your principle shortcomings as a strategist. For example, on your blog, you quote Spencer as writing...

"I have never stated that “the interpretations of the fanatics…reflect the core values of Islamic faith and tradition...” "

YOUR RESPONSE: "What this means is that Spencer thinks that the interpretations of the fanatics DO NOT reflect the core values of Islamic faith and tradition."

RESPONSE: That's not necessarily what it means at all. Spencer is denying a quote that has been falsely attributed to him; it doesn't mean he believes the opposite.

Hesp, Robert lives in the real world. He has to choose his words carefully to maintain his bonafides so that he can continue to reach a mass audience. I think he's done pretty damn well in not having compromised his integrity or his beliefs in the process.

Posted by: Cornelius [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 18, 2009 4:50 PM

Cornelius:

"Tunisia, for example, has constructed a secular polity without an excess of violence."

It's a dictatorship that tortures people. It avoids violence in the sense of conflagrations by imposing violence and threat of violence in the sense of tyranny (the only way that secularism has been able to thrive in any Muslim polity, btw).

"But even if you turn out to be right, I'd rather the battleground between modernity and Islam be fought in Dar ul Islam instead of the West."

That will be increasingly untenable, the more millions of Muslims penetrate into the West. In fact, it's pretty much untenable now, given the number of Muslims in the West, if a "revolution" of that global import began to catch fire.

HESPERADO: "I don't envision the West being willing to set mass deportation in motion until at least 50 years go by, but probably not before 100 years."

MY RESPONSE: You are imagining non-activity and non-evolution during those 50 years. Rather, it will be a process of growing crystallization, not 50 years of nothing and then a sudden decision. Secondly, the West is light years more sophisticated and superior to Islamic culture. When the time comes, even with 40% Muslims, it will be doable. It could have been much more easily doable sooner, and far less bloody, but it will be doable when the West wakes up. The only thing stopping the West is its ignorance. Once it wakes up, it will be lights out for Muslims. The end game will be the only rational option then. I just think that working toward that end game so that it dawns on the West sooner, rather than later, is more practical. Even sooner, it will still be much later than it should be -- but is that an argument for allowing it to be as late as possible and therefore as bloody and messy as possible?

YOU: For example, on your blog, you quote Spencer as writing...

"I have never stated that “the interpretations of the fanatics…reflect the core values of Islamic faith and tradition...”

YOU QUOTING MY RESPONSE: "What this means is that Spencer thinks that the interpretations of the fanatics DO NOT reflect the core values of Islamic faith and tradition."

YOUR RESPONSE: That's not necessarily what it means at all. Spencer is denying a quote that has been falsely attributed to him; it doesn't mean he believes the opposite. Hesp, Robert lives in the real world. He has to choose his words carefully to maintain his bonafides so that he can continue to reach a mass audience.

MY RESPONSE: I appreciate you adducing actual evidence from my argument to present your counter-argument. You have presented here a turgid bundle of complications that have to be painstakingly picked apart.

First, the Spencer quote you cite is clear sophistry. "I have never stated that “the interpretations of the fanatics…reflect the core values of Islamic faith and tradition...” Okay, so he has never "stated" that in so many words. The point is, does he or doesn't he believe it? And has he, or hasn't he, made numerous statements that logically lead anyone of a fair assessment of statements to conclude that he does?

More to the point for us -- why hasn't he stated such an unremarkably true opinion -- especially given the mountain of evidence he himself amasses on Jihad Watch that indicates the reasonablness of such an opinion?

In one of your layers of points turgidly bundled up you indicate a reason why: Robert lives in the real world. He has to choose his words carefully to maintain his bonafides so that he can continue to reach a mass audience.

So which is it? His quote is coherent despite other things he says and the mountain of work he is doing that goes against it? Or it's sophistically calculated to maintain his bonafides?

Frankly, I don't want to defend a West that has to rely on transparently incoherent flim-flam and card tricks and sleight-of-hand to maintain bonafides. Emperors with no clothes on cuts both ways. At the very least, I would hope Spencer just maintains a strategy where he won't need to deploy such shoddy maneuvers.

Posted by: Hesperado [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 18, 2009 7:53 PM

Nothing turgid about my response...it was brief and to the point. Spencer denied a quote that was falsely attributed to him. Why is that so hard to understand?

Furthermore, my guess is that while you maintain your sterling ideological purity from the comforting anonymity of your blog, you probably don't go around at your day job (if you have one) openly expressing such opinions to your peers and superiors. Robert doesn't have such a luxury. He's out in the open...and must conduct himself accordingly.

You seem to want ideological purity from Iranian demonstrators, purity from Robert, purity from one and all...and anyone who doesn't measure up to your vaunted standards is a sophist or PC.

Meanwhile, speaking of turgid, follow your paragraph starting with "You are imagining..."

The rampant speculation culminates in the hyperbole that "it will be lights out on Muslims." This confidence hardly conforms to existing trends. I see the great probability of an opposite outcome...of an aging, barren Europe passing the torch to a successor civilization. A rational analysis of the situation by any objective observer COULD conclude that your predictions are pie in the sky.

Furthermore, while the West is indeed "light years" superior to Islam, it is not necessarily more "sophisticated," at least pertaining to this great struggle. Just compare the effectiveness of Muslim interest groups in their adroit exploitation of our legalisms and openness...with our own inept, deluded attempts to comprehend and relate to Muslims.

You're an obviously intelligent man, Hesperado...and the most intelligent thing you've written on this thread is that you "are not infallible or omniscient". Perhaps you could further develop the practice of such wisdom and humility. Don't judge Robert and your other contemporaries too harshly; they're fighting an uphill battle, doing the best they can under extraordinary circumstances.

Posted by: Cornelius [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 18, 2009 8:46 PM

Cornelius,

"Nothing turgid about my response...it was brief and to the point."

It was brief, but it had complications enfolded within it -- hence my use of the word "bundle". I teased out the two most salient ones:

1) the role of the apparent sophistry of Spencer's quote and your continuing avoidance of it,

2) apparently contradicted by your appeal to Spencer's supposed tactic of maintaining bonafides with PC MC, an appeal apparently calculated to save the sophistry you otherwise seem to avoid acknowledging.

"Spencer denied a quote that was falsely attributed to him. Why is that so hard to understand?"

This once again establishes #1. I've already articulated the sophistry of Spencer's quote, and your defense of it only reinforces that sophistry, in defense of it, while simultaneously ostensibly denying it even exists (though, again, this denial seemingly contradicted by your argument for the merit of the "bonafides" tactic).

"Furthermore, my guess is that while you maintain your sterling ideological purity from the comforting anonymity of your blog, you probably don't go around at your day job (if you have one) openly expressing such opinions to your peers and superiors. Robert doesn't have such a luxury. He's out in the open...and must conduct himself accordingly."

This is irrelevant to our discussion. A person can be brave, but still mistaken in one or more points of their methodology. Conversely, another person can be cowardly, but correct in one or more points of their methodology. Why is it necessary for me to point this elementary logic out to you? It seems that reason is breaking down in your conduct in this discussion, since you don't strike me as so stupid you would fail to comprehend such elementary logic.

"You seem to want ideological purity from Iranian demonstrators, purity from Robert, purity from one and all...and anyone who doesn't measure up to your vaunted standards is a sophist or PC."

Whether I want purity from others besides Spencer is irrelevant to whether or not any given critiques I have of his methology are valid. Again, I must point out points of elementary logic in this discussion.

"Don't judge Robert and your other contemporaries too harshly; they're fighting an uphill battle, doing the best they can under extraordinary circumstances."

Anybody and everybody can benefit from criticism. The point always is whether or not any given criticism is cogent, then valid. And that has to be discussed with actual arguments, in a spirit as dispassionate as possible open to any and all criticisms that show themselves to be maturely proffered -- not fended off by bodyguards protecting the perimeter of their idol.

Posted by: Hesperado [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 19, 2009 12:40 PM

1) The "sophistry" you attribute to Spencer is a form of projection...you've filtered his answer through the prism of your own world view. Robert has been consistent on the issue at hand. He's never set himself up as judge and jury regarding the morality or even the defining content of Islam, his method has always been to establish that those committing violence in the name of Islam are using its foundational texts to justify said violence.

HESPERADO: "A person can be brave and still mistaken on one or more points of their methodology. Conversely, another person can be cowardly, but correct in one or more points in their methodology."

RESPONSE: In other words, you're saying "[even though I can't practice what I preach, I'm right in the abstract]."

Until you've walked in Spencer's shoes, i.e., until you've put yourself out their publicly in the service of the cause, your criticisms are flaccid and hollow.

Meanwhile, no response to paragraphs 5 and 6?

Posted by: Cornelius [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 19, 2009 1:43 PM

Cornelius said:

“You're presupposing that we'll go out with a bang and not a whisper. I make no such assumption.”

My assumption is that Jihadis of one group or another will attack Europe and the U.S. repeatedly (when they think the time is right). I also believe this will happen soon, in the next few years - because the Jihadis just can’t help themselves. I also believe that the attacks will be large enough and violent enough that the P.C. mindset of the West will be “blown away” overnight.

There was mention of the decision to inter the Japanese. This did not spring from rational thought – it was born of fear. Any decision to inter or deport Muslims will spring from that very same emotion.

So it is a very fine and genteel discussion you are having with Hesperado and I do appreciate the way you both articulate your points of view. As far as it goes, I tend to favor your arguments.

But change the game just a little bit, such as suicide bombers simultaneously hitting 3 targets on the same day in the U.S. the next day 4 and so on for a week. How would such events change these lofty and oh so civilized discussions? How would it change Hesperado’s 50 to 100 year estimate?

I am not eager for a “cataclysmic showdown with Islam” but I have a crystal clear appreciation for the fact that at least several million Jihadis will die to make that happen – and I do believe they will get their wish.

Posted by: Davegreybeard [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 20, 2009 12:13 AM

"his method has always been to establish that those committing violence in the name of Islam are using its foundational texts to justify said violence."

Unforunately, if accurate about Spencer, it makes him no different from those who forever distinguish the "extremists" who are trying to "hijack" the foundational texts, from those who are using those foundational texts for good -- for it only says they are "using" those texts to justify bad things; it says nothing about whether those texts actually justify them. Not only those foundational texts themselves, but the mountain of evidence Spencer has provided, as well as referenced from the studies of countless other wise men and women whether scholars or brave ex-Muslims, throughout the years, pointing to Muslims in the news today, in the last few years, and throughout centuries of history with millions of dead people in the wake, indicates otherwise so monumentally and fundamentally, it is a searing travesty to continue to mince words about this.

Posted by: Hesperado [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 20, 2009 2:30 AM

Dave,

I think your prognostications are much more plausible than Hesperados. A mega-terror event in the next decade may indeed transform the equation...although 9-11, as bad as it was, did little to alter the formal discourse about Islam, shrouded as it is in misconceptions and PC, though admittedly, it certainly DID alter public perceptions (repressed by the media) AND the geo-political landscape (two foreign invasions).

I see the 50-100 years timetable for the expulsion scheme as entirely improbable; the demographic tide - at least in Europe - will be irreversible by then. If Hesperado's method is to have any chance of success, it will have to occur within 20 years.

I'm not any more capable of predicting the future than anyone else. Both of you guys could end up being right.

Your central point Dave, that the Muslim penchant for mass bloodletting will facilitate policies considered unthinkable now, is a legitimate one. My hope, slim as it is, is that Darul Islam can be brought (kicking and screaming no doubt) into the modern age without a cataclysmic war.

But I'd certainly prefer war than surrender. I love freedom...as a concept AND as a way of life. I want to see it survive for my descendants.

Meanwhile, I concede that Robert Spencer IS constrained by what he can and cannot say. But this is no fault of his own, it is the culture we live in. He should be praised for skillfully pushing the envelope as far as he has...instead of castigated for not pushing it all the way and burning his bridges.

Posted by: Cornelius [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 20, 2009 8:01 AM

Hesperado,

You are picking at nits my friend, all the while missing the logic of Spencer’s strategy. When you say:

“Unfortunately, if accurate about Spencer, it makes him no different from those who forever distinguish the "extremists" who are trying to "hijack" the foundational texts, from those who are using those foundational texts for good -- for it only says they are "using" those texts to justify bad things; it says nothing about whether those texts actually justify them.”

You are both wrong and have completely missed the point of what is occurring.

It is one thing for a person to present facts to prove a point and then hammer it home by stating that same point – which is what you would have Spencer do. It is quite different for one to present facts that lead to a certain conclusion; yet scrupulously avoid stating that quite obvious conclusion. It is a tactic that is elegant in its purity in that the listener is in no way contaminated by the beliefs or prejudices of the speaker – and the speaker thus cannot be accused of guiding the listener to (in the case of Islam) a horrendous conclusion.

When you say that Spencer is “no different from those who forever distinguish the "extremists…" you have strayed very far from the truth. The people that speak of “Islamic extremists” NEVER shed light on the subject by presenting the actual texts and tenets of Islam.

Spencer, as we all would agree, does a tremendous job of educating the world as to the true nature of Islam. What he does NOT do is ram his own conclusions down your throat.

Posted by: Davegreybeard [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 20, 2009 9:29 AM

Cornelius latterly wrote:

"The "sophistry" you attribute to Spencer [in the quote "I have never stated that “the interpretations of the fanatics…reflect the core values of Islamic faith and tradition...”] is a form of projection...you've filtered his answer through the prism of your own world view. Robert has been consistent on the issue at hand. He's never set himself up as judge and jury regarding the morality or even the defining content of Islam, his method has always been to establish that those committing violence in the name of Islam are using its foundational texts to justify said violence.”

This is ostensibly vitiated by what Cornelius formerly wrote when, after quoting my exegesis of that Spencer quote -- "What this means is that Spencer thinks that the interpretations of the fanatics DO NOT reflect the core values of Islamic faith and tradition" -- he wrote:

“That's not necessarily what it means at all. Spencer is denying a quote that has been falsely attributed to him; it doesn't mean he believes the opposite.”

First of all, my exegesis did not reveal that Spencer “believes the opposite”: my exegesis uncovered the meaning of his statement by simply translating the negatives into positives. When someone says “I have never stated that abortion is bad” -- what is the point of such a statement other than that they do not believe that abortion is bad? It is pure lawyer-like sophistry to try to maintain that such a statement doesn't mean what is plain as the nose on one's face, by insisting on the strict superficial import of the semantics, while disingenuously affecting to deny their obvious implicit meaning.

The only possible point of such a statement is revealed by Cornelius’s exculpatory explanation for why Spencer would formulate something like that:

“Hesp, Robert lives in the real world. He has to choose his words carefully to maintain his bonafides so that he can continue to reach a mass audience.”

I.e., when he makes a statement -- "I have never stated that “the interpretations of the fanatics…reflect the core values of Islamic faith and tradition...” -- that any reasonable exegesis would translate as meaning that in fact he has “never stated” that because he does not believe it, he can then fall back on Cornelius’s sophistical defense that “well, what I strictly said here is that ‘I never stated’ -- that doesn’t mean I don’t believe it” in order to placate both the PC MCs who would cast him into the outer darkness from his already sub-Ann Coulter position, and the Anti-Jihadists like Cornelius who are obviously easily placated and whose easy placation finds an implicit satisfaction in the likelihood that Spencer didn’t really mean what his words obviously imply.

Posted by: Hesperado [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 20, 2009 10:10 AM

Davegreybeard,

"It is one thing for a person to present facts to prove a point and then hammer it home by stating that same point – which is what you would have Spencer do."

No, I've already stated above that "As I've said before, Spencer doesn't have to stand on the rooftops and condemn all Muslims and advocate their mass expulsion. All he has to do is not recommend, nor editorially imply recommendation of, concrete measures that would undermine the evolution toward the mass expulsion policy."

"It is quite different for one to present facts that lead to a certain conclusion; yet scrupulously avoid stating that quite obvious conclusion. It is a tactic that is elegant in its purity in that the listener is in no way contaminated by the beliefs or prejudices of the speaker – and the speaker thus cannot be accused of guiding the listener to (in the case of Islam) a horrendous conclusion."

The speaker in fact can be thus accused, and Spencer gets accused of that practically every day of his life. When a person like Lawrence Auster, for example, devotes 60% of his time and energy putting up photos of black criminals and publishing stories of black murderers and rapists, the reasonable conclusion to draw is that he is clearly implying that blacks are more violent than whites and that this is an urgent problem that needs to be addressed through social attitudes, public policy and laws. The difference with Auster, however (in this regard at least), is that he doesn't pretend through using meticulously elegant disingenuity that he does not in fact believe what is clearly implied by his mission. He makes no bones about it, but articulates clearly that blacks in terms of degree present a social problem that should be remedied only by segregation.

But as I implied above, there is a third tack to take aside from these two binary choices -- either hide your implications in plain sight behind "elegant" disingenuity that anybody of basic intelligence can see through, or boldly stand on the rooftop and proclaim the implication: and that third choice is to avoid saying things that cause such problems. Thus, Spencer should never have said "I have never stated that “the interpretations of the fanatics…reflect the core values of Islamic faith and tradition...” In that context, his interlocutor didn't even ask him whether he had said that; his interlocutor merely implied it indirectly -- so Spencer gratuitously offered that up and made it more visible when he didn't have to. A tactical mistake that can't be covered up by his acolytes coming along afterward and trying to convince people that the Emperor in fact has clothes. Now, let us hypothetically (but not improbably) imagine a scenario where Spencer is in a public debate with some Islam apologist, and that apologist turns to Spencer and asks him point-blank: "Have you not stated that “the interpretations of the fanatics…reflect the core values of Islamic faith and tradition...”?" Spencer could in that kind of moment say "No, I have not," and leave it at that. But what if the apologist has an ounce of cleverness and intelligence -- which, again, it is not improbable to expect will arise some day? If he does have an ounce of cleverness and intelligence, he will pounce back with the obviously logical follow-up question: "Ah, ok, Mr. Spencer; but do you think that “the interpretations of the fanatics…reflect the core values of Islamic faith and tradition...”?"

At this point, I can recommend a way for him to navigate, without tap-dancing in overly transparent disingenuity. He can answer diplomatically:

"Well, from my studies of the foundational texts of Islam, as well as the writings of various Muslims throughout the ages up to the present, supplemented by the writings of various scholars on the subject, it is my opinion that interpretations of the fanatics do reflect the core values of Islamic faith and tradition -- but I do not necessarily expect anyone to accept my opinion as truth merely on my word alone, and rather expect at a minimum that they will try to familiarize themselves with the same evidence I have studied and come to their own conclusion."

Back to Davegreybeard:

"When you say that Spencer is “no different from those who forever distinguish the "extremists…" you have strayed very far from the truth."

I didn't say that "Spencer is no different from those who forever distinguish the 'extremists'." I said that if Cornelius's exegesis of Spencer is accurate, then Spencer would be no different from those who forever distinguish the extremists (from the non-extremists).

"The people that speak of “Islamic extremists” NEVER shed light on the subject by presenting the actual texts and tenets of Islam."

There are a few who do blatantly, like Daniel Pipes, who believes the majority of Muslims are not only not bad people, but are our only salvation from the problem their Islam is causing us. And yet Pipes remains a part of the Anti-Islam (woops! I mean Anti-Jihad) Movement -- as that Movement is informally and officially defined by its elites, that is. And then there are the others who do so continually by implication (such as for example Brigitte Gabriel, who is always so careful to delineate the problem as "radical Islam" and "radical Islamists").

cf. http://hesperado.blogspot.com/2008/09/asymptote-vs-asymptote-new-york-times.html

Posted by: Hesperado [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 20, 2009 11:02 AM

Well Hesperado, I think we've taken this thing about as far as we can go.

My final thoughts:

1) You abandoned all discussion about the improbability of your timetable, in particular the supposed sociological awakening that will render "lights out on Muslims" at the very time when Muslims will have achieved their status as a majority or a near majority in western Europe. You best fine tune that timetable of yours.

2) You neglected explaining your own discrepancy between word and deed. I've mostly found abstract truths to be empty phrases when they aren't translatable into reality. When you've gone public AS YOUR REAL SELF with your very justifiable animus towards Islam, your criticism of Robert will not wreak of hypocrisy the way it currently does.

3) If someone accuses me of saying "abortion is bad"...and I've never said it, even if I believe it and have implied it in my written or spoken words, I have the right to deny the accusation. I have the right to ownership of my own words, and zealously maintaining that right is a part of basic human integrity. Robert would be a fool to let his detractors set his agenda...or even worse, to choose his words for him.

Listen man, you're a good guy, most definitely fighting on the right side of the issue. But it makes little sense to devote yourself to excessive criticism of erstwhile allies like Spencer, Pipes and Gabriel, rather than to concentrate on the enemy (the Islamo-Left). Even though you and he operate on far different latitudes of the political spectrum, your approach reminds me of Charles Johnson, who prefers to attack fellow Republicans whom he feels are not sufficiently "enlightened"...than concentrating on the Democrats who are literally destroying our country.

I'm not going to be so proud or egotistical that I won't continue to consider your arguments here. I hope you'll do the same.

Thanks for the discourse.

Posted by: Cornelius [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 20, 2009 1:19 PM

Cornelius, it's getting tedious to try to have a discussion with someone who doesn't read what I've already written.

Posted by: Hesperado [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 20, 2009 6:48 PM

Hesperado,

Unfortunately, it is YOU who are tedious.

Try a very looonng look in the mirror, man and “reflect” on it. Then:

Try to focus on your enemies, not your friends.

This will be better for you - though you may not know it at the time.

Posted by: Davegreybeard [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 21, 2009 1:19 AM

Transcript of Hesperado's comments on Auster

2009-08-06T12:38:00.005-07:00

The following is a transcript of my comments in the comments field of a blog essay titled "The Trouble with Larry" by Steve Burton on the blog What's Wrong with the World. For the full context (including the comments of others in response to my comments, simply go to the link provided above).

Here begins the transcript:

I've had a couple of run-ins with Auster. He seems to have a remarkable problem reading and understanding his interlocutor. He compounds this problem by running with his misunderstanding like an enthusiastically wrongheaded quarterback running with the ball all the way across the football field in the wrong direction. And of course, the more his interlocutor tries to clarify the misunderstanding, the more that Auster exacerbates it, sometimes to grotesque proportions -- which only makes Auster comport himself with more and more aggrieved sincerity as the Only One Who Knows the Truth as the argument unfolds. He's a master of the tactic of trying to squirm out of corners he himself has painted himself into.

His attempts to argue that Nazism is not Leftism -- which he recently harks back to on his blog -- are a case in point. He links the reader to a comment by someone who begs to differ with him and who cites John Ray. Auster obliviously forges ahead with his torturously complex hypothesis about how Nazism must be “rightism” and cannot possibly be Leftist, and never once acknowledges the suggestion to read John Ray. No one should pontificate about this subject of Nazism vs. Leftism without first reading John Ray and then at least providing counter-arguments to John Ray’s arguments. And anyone who does so pontificate, as Auster does, cannot be taken seriously.

Posted by Hesperado | June 14, 2009 4:08 AM

In Dean Ericson's defense of Auster, he writes:

"The reason liberals and conservatives have been ineffectual at countering our leftist enemies, the reason we remain morally paralyzed and incapable of effective defense, is that we share certain basic moral premises with leftists -- all people are equal", and "discrimination is wrong", being two of the most paralyzing."

This accurately represents Auster's method & analysis, and unintentionally discloses one major problem with it: Auster hammers his point relentlessly and with myriad permutations on the level of description, but never seems to bother to probe the level of causation. While it is useful to call attention to the massive fact that the vast majority of Centrists and Conservatives share with Leftists the same tendency to whitewash Islam, it is of equal importance to investigate why this is. I find Auster's failure to do the latter tends to result in the development and communication of a taxonomy separating "liberalism" from "true conservatism" that is curiously and paradoxically at once simplistic and tortured, not to mention vulnerable to paranoid conspiracy theory and/or a Gnostic view of society and politics -- at least, to the degree that one wrests coherency from it. The only thing that seems to save this Austerian taxonomy from these flaws is the contraction of the "true conservative" to the rump of a remnant composed only of Auster, his approved commenters on his blog, and those preciously rare individual writers or politicians in whom Auster has detected no signs of the "false conservative" -- a rump so negligible and echo-chamberishly incoherent it would not rise even to the level of a Gnostic sect.

Incidentally, and apropos of the above, Dean Ericson mentions Auster's ability to sniff out "liberalism" in Conservatives by testing their posture with regard to the problem of Islam and by thus detecting unacceptably soft approaches to that problem -- or among those who pretend to have a stronger stand, by noting their lack of any concrete plan to deal with that problem. I have analyzed Auster's concrete plan on my blog and found it wanting mainly due to incoherence. In this context, I also sniffed out "liberalism" in Auster's own approach. One example: when articulating his plan of containment of Muslims in Muslim lands, he writes:

..this containment of the Muslim peoples can be accomplished without violating their dignity and essence as Muslims.

Aside from the preposterousness of claiming that a people's "dignity and essence" would not be inherently violated by forcing them into quarantine at the point of a gun (and, of course -- to the extent Auster is capable of pursuing the logic of his own formulations -- to punish them with violence if need be should they defy the quarantine), and aside from the blatantly incorrect notion of Islamic "dignity and essence" which in the Islamic worldview is precisely violated when their God-given right and mandate to imperialistic Lebensraum is denied (which it would be on the most massive scale imaginable under Auster's containment policy), there is the deeper, more "liberal" problem with Auster's words here: who gives a flying fiqh about the "dignity and essence" of Muslims anyway? Only "liberals" do that, I thought.

For the full details of my analysis, see my essay The Iron Veil -- in which, incidentally, I propose what I think is a more coherent plan of global quarantine of Muslims to solve the metastasizing problem their Islam is causing the world:

http://hesperado.blogspot.com/2009/05/iron-veil.html

Posted by Hesperado | June 14, 2009 12:39 PM

Two Cents,

Your argument in defense of Auster has an internal defect: it fails to account for the overwhelming likelihood, given the powerfully dominant and mainstream climate of opinion throughout the West that prevails now and that shows no signs of abating, that in fact the West will in the coming two decades at the very least (if not much longer) continue to refuse to see the building burning -- while even the timid voices of "perhaps we should call the fire dept." will remain marginal, though growing as time goes along.

Given this concrete factor that alters the abstract position of Auster, Auster needs to have a contingency plan: because the West in 20+ years -- with the population of Muslims within the West having increased by millions due to immigration continuing to be allowed and even encouraged in the meantime as well as untold numbers more being born within the West to multiple baby-factory wives -- will have changed sufficiently to alter the configuration of the problem. At that point, merely halting immigration will not be enough, and Auster's supplementary carrot-and-stick incentives to Muslims to voluntarily leave will have even less traction among them than they would now. Indeed, assuming the West is ready to engage the gears of immigration halting at that point, it will likely inflame and "radicalize" the increased millions of Muslims within the West, putting us in increased jeopardy (for it is safe to assume that during those intervening decades, innumerable and unpinpointable Muslims will have been patiently laying the groundwork for multiple WMD attacks in addition to smaller-scale attacks on us from within), and leading to a chain-reaction of events that would force the West to violate the "dignity and essence" of Muslims which Auster worries about in far more ruthless ways than he ever imagined.

Posted by Hesperado | June 14, 2009 2:24 PM

Two Cents,

A counter-argument requires actually understanding the argument you are countering. Your attempted counter-argument fails to adequately factor in my argument.

The first step to establishing the proper footing for an actual debate in such a circumstance, then, would be to paraphrase the argument of your interlocutor, followed by the interlocutor agreeing that you have indeed understood him correctly. At that point, you would engage with the argument point by point, and then your interlocutor would have something actually substantial and relevant to respond to.

I only point these elementary things out for general purposes; not with any expectation that they will be respected and practiced.

Posted by Hesperado | June 14, 2009 9:14 PM

Two Cents responded:

"I responded to what you wrote."

Unfortunately, simply claiming something is so does not suffice as an equivalent of actually demonstrating it. The only way to do that, again, is:

1) to paraphrase my initial argument

2) to wait to see that I agree that your paraphrase is accurate

3) to then proceed with a counter-argument.

All else is just so much hot air. And not only is it hot air, it is an insult to Western Civilization.

Posted by Hesperado | June 15, 2009 12:42 AM

moldbug,

Everything you say has merit, but still doesn't exempt Auster from the remedy of constructive criticism which, when it is appropriate, helps anyone who isn't God. The task then is to winnow out the constructive criticism from the useless or counter-productive criticism; not to bracket out all criticism. The former requires a kind of rational labor that Auster and his acolytes often don't seem to be capable of, whatever other talents he and they, following him, do possess. It is thus left up to others. That's the way of Western Civilization.

Posted by Hesperado | June 15, 2009 2:38 AM

Hesperado says,

The liberal case for open borders is precisely that it inherently violates people's "dignity and essence" (and their "human rights", etc.) for a country to control its borders and deny aliens entry (if necessary, by force). If you say it is preposterous to claim that a country cannot control its borders without violating the "dignity and essence" of those aliens who seek entry, then you are clearly a liberal who has accepted the liberal premise that "borders must be open" and is paralyzed by it. Auster, on the other hand, is not a liberal, so why should he accept this liberal premise?

Posted by JP | June 15, 2009 9:31 AM

Ilíon adduces apparently inconvtrovertible evidence that Auster misrepresents Steyn. I have also seen incontrovertible evidence of Auster misrepresenting me (though I don't expect readers to believe me without evidence, for now too tedious to reproduce). Given the mature comportment of Ilíon here, I tend to trust his word on others whom he claims Auster has similarly misrepresented, as well as on the ensuing stubbornness of his denials in the face of criticism re: his initial misrepresentations.

I don't, however, necessarily draw the same conclusion that Ilíon does -- that Auster is willfully lying. This could be the case, but I think it's worse. At least a liar has coherence. I think Auster has some serious problems with ratiocination, which if so must include psychological factors. Among other effects this has is to render his analyses suspect, particularly when they rely on evidence he uses, evidence the reader sometimes doesn't have time and patience to peruse and amplify with larger contexts.

This doesn't apply everywhere at all times the same, of course. Sometimes Auster is quite good at critiquing the expressions of others who need a good thrashing. Other times, however, he fails, sometimes in small points, sometimes egregiously, as Ilíon has documented. And when Auster fails egregiously, he compounds the problem by digging in his heels and making the problem morph into sometimes grotesque proportions. And then his acolytes circle the wagons, and the rest is intra-Blogospheric history.

Posted by Hesperado | June 15, 2009 5:00 PM

JP,

You made an elementary, yet also unforunately major, error in reading me.

You quoted me --

-- then you objected:

"The liberal case for open borders is precisely that it inherently violates people's "dignity and essence" (and their "human rights", etc.) for a country to control its borders and deny aliens entry (if necessary, by force)."

Before I reproduce the rest of your objection, I apparently need to clarify what I thought was already clear in my post: namely two points:

1) to quarantine a people under military force does in fact "violate" their "dignity and essence";

however,

2) violating a people's "dignity and essence" is a good thing, when that people follow a dangerous, unjust and evil ideology and when as a logical consequence that people pose a danger to our societies too great for us to expect to assimilate them and respect their dignity and essence.

What my post was objecting to was Auster's clear implication that we can militarily quarantine a people without violating their dignity and essence -- which is an absurd, and liberal, notion. Sometimes in this world people have to do tough things to other people. Only a liberal would think we can handle the problem of Islam without violating the dignity and essence of Muslims. That assumption by Auster is spectacular poppycock -- and also, it is supremely liberal.

You went on to write:

"If you say it is preposterous to claim that a country cannot control its borders without violating the "dignity and essence" of those aliens who seek entry, then you are clearly a liberal who has accepted the liberal premise that "borders must be open" and is paralyzed by it."

No. As per above, I think it's preposterous to claim that we can do what we need to do to control our immigration in general without hurting people's feelings and without violating their dignity and essence. If a poor Mexican family wants to immigrate from their Mexican hell-hole and take advantage of our society's superiority, and we deny them that chance, we are hurting them. So what? Life is tough sometimes. Tough frijoles. If we have to do tough things that hurt people in order to maintain our security, stability and way of life, that's the way it has to be. But to claim we can do this without hurting people is preposterous, and if you would claim this, it would mean that liberal assumptions have crept into your mind and informed your thought without your awareness.

"Auster, on the other hand, is not a liberal, so why should he accept this liberal premise?"

I think I have effectively argued that the premise is not, in fact, liberal. As for Auster being not a liberal, yet simultaneously holding a liberal thought process about this -- I chalk that up to the incoherence of his thought process, for which I have seen many different instances of evidence on many different issues.

Posted by Hesperado | June 15, 2009 5:16 PM

JP quoted Steyn:

Q: You say in your book that we can “submit to Islam, destroy Islam, or reform Islam.” What would you like to see us do?

Steyn: Well, I don’t really think we can really, credibly do any of those—I think if those are the choices, we’ll probably end up submitting to Islam.

Steyn is correct -- IF those are the only choices.

But beyond these three --

1) submit to Islam,
2) destroy Islam, or
3) reform Islam

there is a fourth option, the only realistic one optimally conducive to our ongoing security:

4) manage Islam.

And the management most comporting with the dimensions of the problem Islam poses is a global quarantine, which I have argued would require the adjunct of total deportation of Muslims out of the West. Auster's version of this option, however, is incoherent on some key points, as I have argued in my essay, An Iron Veil --

http://hesperado.blogspot.com/2009/05/iron-veil.html

Now, whether Steyn tends to be inconclusive about the logic of his own position, that's another matter, distinct from Auster's claim that he wants us to submit and wants us to make nice with Muslims even as Muslims begin to become demographically and sociopolitically dominant in the future.

Posted by Hesperado | June 15, 2009 5:58 PM

Roach:

"Larry is smart and writes a great many useful things. He is also prickly, self-righteous, angry, and constantly pissing people off."

I don't necessarily mind prickly, self-righteous and angry intellects who constantly piss people off. What I do mind is another defect in Auster more pertinently problematic than the venial sins you list, which Ilion above has been trying to impress upon readers here: namely, Auster's tendency to misrepresent the positions, counter-arguments and criticisms of others. With this one defect remaining in play, it would not matter if Auster were otherwise remarkably mild-mannered, humble, even-tempered and kindly generous in manner.

Posted by Hesperado | June 15, 2009 6:06 PM

Two Cents writes:

"not allowing Muslims in your country is hardly such a violation given that they rigorously deny Christians the right to enter their countries and set up churches and ministries."

Not allowing Muslims in your country is a violation -- and it's good. We should violate them. They deserve it, and the danger they pose to us makes it impossible for us not to violate their "dignity and essence" in any number of ways as we rationally pursue ways to make our societies safe from their ideology.

Is that so hard to digest? I think you are trying to have your cake and eat it too, just as Auster is: Hey, we can control this problem of Muslims and at the same time not violate them! Utter poppycock. And supremely liberal.

Posted by Hesperado | June 15, 2009 6:19 PM

Billy Nudgel wrote about Auster:

"He's out there every day hammering the same old tried and true point home: that a complete and absolute rejection of Islam in total is the way to go."

Actually, he does not "absolutely" reject Islam "in total". In an exchange with me, he specifically, and crucially, restrained himself from what he was afraid was my "totalistic" proposition that we deport all Muslims from the West. Whatever merits this hesitation by Auster may have to some observers who lean more in his direction than mine, it cannot be described as an "absolute rejection of Islam in total".

Posted by Hesperado | June 16, 2009 5:06 PM

Mack wrote:

"I hearken back to the first time Hesperado called Larry a Gnostic. It was at that point that it became evident that vitriol and aspersions would be cast at anyone not fully entertaining Larry's personal orthodoxy. I think I stopped taking any of it personally when I was personally characterized as a 'pure liberal'."

I never called Auster a Gnostic. What I did do, as I unfolded the question of why Auster seems to fail to probe the etiological puzzle of why there are so many conservatives who are liberalized, was to conjecture about

"...various different permutations [used by Auster] of labels that try to capture that animal the "false conservative", who seem to be sprouting up all over the place, often in highly unlikely places to boot, which makes the puzzle all the more puzzling, one would think. One alternative explanation that might be implicitly lurking in Auster's paradigm is that of the "ecclesiola" -- i.e., the "pure remnant" who alone know the truth, while the vast majority have gone astray. This would be an impermissible explanation, unless one were -- either willfully or unwittingly -- succumbing to the Gnostic temptation to damn the Western cosmion. I tend to think Auster is not doing this, but I'd like to see more tangible and copious indications to make sure."

In that same thread at the blog "Mangan's Miscellany", Auster weighed in and, of course, with egregious inaccuracy accused me of accusing him of being a Gnostic. I see that Mack has just taken Auster's word for this, rather than bothering to read the facts.

After I reiterated -- patiently and maturely -- that I never said that, Auster's torturous paranoia morphed into perceiving "attacks" by me on him (as he wrote subsequently on his own blog). Fuller details of the grotesque contortions Auster generates out of nothing may be found here:

http://mangans.blogspot.com/2008/11/auster-vs-sailer.html

Posted by Hesperado | June 16, 2009 5:41 PM

Mack, sorry -- I hastily misread your comment to Ilion. However, most of my post remains relevant, including your misapprehension of what I did actually say about Auster re: Gnosticism.

Posted by Hesperado | June 16, 2009 5:43 PM

Got a question for you, Hesperado.

You say,

I would much rather fault a Proposer of Solutions who has failed to integrate a proper analysis of the problem (i.e., an Auster), than I would an Analyst who shows he grasps the problem more or less but who hasn't yet profferred a Solution.

For the benefit of those of us who don't know the reason for your hostility to Auster, could you please briefly summarize the proper analysis of the situation that Auster fails to give? I'd like to know where you're "coming from."

Posted by Alan Roebuck | June 17, 2009 11:46 AM

Alan Roebuck,

It would be difficult for me to boil down my analysis of Auster's deficiencies -- with respect to his solution proposal of Quarantine -- further than I have down in part of my essay on my blog (the Auster critique there is less than half of the essay, though you might need to read the full essay to understand why I make the critique in the first place).

Those deficiencies stem I think from the apparent fact that Auster is what I call an "asymptotic analyst" of the problem of Islam -- he's almost at the point of total condemnation, but not quite. I don't know what makes any given analyst asymptotic, but I think one common motivation is the presence of PC MC in their heads (however much they think they may have rooted it out), and the persistence, therefore, of the notion that if we the West take a total condmenation of Muslims to its logical conclusion, we will have no choice -- being the evil white Westerners we are always ready for the opportunity to oppress and abuse non-white non-Westerners -- but to go down the "slippery slope" to genocide.

Sometimes it's that .01% left short of total condemnation that can exert an anomolous amount of resistance in the analyst to certain things. Auster's disinclination to be "totalistic" about the Islam problem (i.e., re: deportation of all Muslims) is one important indicator of this. In this respect, Auster is not taking his own advice. Or, if he thinks that merely having proferred a Plan is sufficient to be a Serious Anti-Islamist and absolves him of following the logic of the problem (let alone of being substantively criticized), then that is dismaying. You will see what I mean I think in more concrete detail, if you read my essay.

http://hesperado.blogspot.com/2009/05/iron-veil.html

Posted by Hesperado | June 17, 2009 10:57 PM

Hesperado,

I’ve read the article you linked. Looks like your dispute with Auster is that you call for the expulsion of all Moslems from the West, but Larry, while agreeing in principle, makes some exceptions that, to your way of thinking, undercut his entire position of “Separationism,” thus rendering him contradictory and therefore ridiculous.

I don’t think this is sufficient warrant for harsh attacks. I presume that you are interested in defending America and the West from the Moslem menace, and therefore are interested in convincing as many people as possible that your position is correct. But John Q. Public doesn’t care about the nuances that separate your position from Auster’s, and he cares even less about the alleged character deficiencies of Auster or anyone else.

For what it’s worth, I think Auster is more correct than you on this issue, but you two could certainly work together toward eliminating the Moslem menace, while at the same time acknowledging that you have some strong disagreements.

The reason I think Auster is more correct is that he understands that the problem is with the entire intellectual/spiritual/moral/social orientation of the West, an orientation I describe by saying that liberalism—the worldview of the left—is our not-officially-acknowledged State Religion. And this means that the problem is comprehensive: we cannot just correct one discrete part of our thinking (e.g., “multiculturalism”) and then be able properly to defend ourselves.

Because the problem is comprehensive, so is the remedy: we must deal with as much of liberalism as we can; we must offer a comprehensive solution that includes properly dealing with hostile foreigners. To ensure that John Q. Public will listen to us, we must point him toward truths that he can begin to grasp intuitively rather than demand that he immediately endorse a plan from which he will instinctively recoil.

I also point out in passing that you are criticizing Auster for the opposite reason that Steve Burton does: He says Auster is too harsh; you say Auster is too soft. But if Auster is too soft, Burton, Steyn and the rest of the conservative establisment deserve far more of your criticism.

Just so you know where I’m coming from: Yes, I’m one of Auster’s “minions;” I even have my own page at View From the Right containing links to most of my web-published writings on defending America from liberalism and its allies: http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/012252.html

Posted by Alan roebuck | June 18, 2009 3:44 PM

Alan roebuck --

"Looks like your dispute with Auster is that you call for the expulsion of all Moslems from the West, but Larry, while agreeing in principle, makes some exceptions that, to your way of thinking, undercut his entire position of “Separationism,” thus rendering him contradictory and therefore ridiculous."

First, Auster's disinclination to deport all Muslims is only one thing I find defective in his solution. Second, rather than put it that the exceptions he makes to his otherwise apparently holistic view of the threat of Islam "undercut his entire position of Separationism", it's more that the exceptions make the whole thing incoherent. Auster is trying to have his cake and eat it too: i.e., trying to seem stronger than all the other analysts, but still retain provisions (mostly implicit and/or informally wedged in) that are based in suppressing that strength in the name of some kind of gingerly dislike for being "totalistic" against Muslims and in the name of wanting to ensure their "dignity and essence". He thus tends to weaken his own solution with the very same "liberalism" he accuses others of.

You wrote:

"I don’t think this is sufficient warrant for harsh attacks."

I do not "attack" Auster, let alone have I ever "harshly" done so. Auster has this strange predilection for the word "attack" everytime someone criticizes him. The word "attack" should be reserved for specific special instances of hostile intent and effect. It is like a red alarm bell in rhetoric. It should not be flung around glibly, as he does. (Robert Spencer also has that tendency.)

"I presume that you are interested in defending America and the West from the Moslem menace, and therefore are interested in convincing as many people as possible that your position is correct. But John Q. Public doesn’t care about the nuances that separate your position from Auster’s, and he cares even less about the alleged character deficiencies of Auster or anyone else."

A War of Ideas is a multi-faceted, complex process, and it usually takes a long time to wage on many different fronts. It is not reducible to convincing John Q. Public. That is one important facet, but not the only one. I would like to think that John Q. Public is smarter than to think everything has to be boiled down to pap sufficiently simplistic and mediocre so that the most people will be on board -- for, the question arises, on board what? The platform that galvanizes people also has to be a platform that will implement policies when the time comes. And the substance of that is important too.

"For what it’s worth, I think Auster is more correct than you on this issue, but you two could certainly work together toward eliminating the Moslem menace, while at the same time acknowledging that you have some strong disagreements."

I'm perfectly willing to work with Auster and anybody else who is roughly speaking anti-Islam. It's up to them to work with me, a person who may continue to critique them on points I feel need critiquing in the name of constructive criticism. Any healthy movement does not anxiously suppress internal criticism; it positively embraces it. That's what a healthy organism does. Unhealthy organisms put up paranoid defenses against all constructive criticism and labels them as "attacks". If they can't take criticism, then they can't work with me. And if they can't work with me, there's nothing I can do about it. Auster has ostracized me for a stranger reason than his hypersensitivity to criticism: he has ostracized me because in his view, I expressed some things to him in private emails that made him think, so he said, that my approach to debate & dialogue is robotic and mechanical -- because I try to value objective comportment as of higher importance than infusing emotionality into exchanges. This had come up because he kept pestering me about why I was continuing to treat a certain person named "awake" with what seemed to be civility after "awake" had been treating me rather shabbily and once made rhetorical mention of "putting out my teeth" or something like that. And I told Auster that I treat "awake" with what seems to be civility (such as beginning my missives to him with "awake" following by a colon) because in fact I don't care about "awake" as a human being but rather as an opportunity to continue the larger debate. It's my business who I treat with the human respect I think they deserve, not Auster's. In retrospect, I think I made the mistake of trying to counter-argue Auster's pestering of me in this regard, when what I should have done is lapse into a bit of "human" interaction and told him to "Mind your own beeswax!" At any rate, Auster at that point retreated from ever wanting to communicate with me again because he was too "uncomfortable" with my approach -- not because of anything to do with ideas or even to do with me criticizing him -- and his retreat included never citing me on his blog again except once in the context of also informing his readership how much of an enemy I am, and certainly never publishing my comments again on his blog. After that, he then used any criticisms I raised of his approach as evidence of my propensity to "attack" him and therefore as evidence of my status as an official enemy of his. Here's a little dose of "humanity" from me at this particular juncture: The guy has a screw loose.

"The reason I think Auster is more correct is that he understands that the problem is with the entire intellectual/spiritual/moral/social orientation of the West, an orientation I describe by saying that liberalism—the worldview of the left—is our not-officially-acknowledged State Religion."

On my blog, over the past three years, I have written over 100 essays, many of them detailed analyses, of my understanding of the primary problem with the West being PC MC, and how this is the #1 reason why the West remains perilously irrational in the face of a global revival of Islam. Your distinction between me and Auster, thus, is ill-informed. Whether my macro-analysis is better or worse than Auster's would then depend upon a comparison and presentation of argument based upon a reading of at least a representative sampling of my essays. But I definitely have plumbed the dimension of the problem which you claim only Auster has plumbed.

"And this means that the problem is comprehensive: we cannot just correct one discrete part of our thinking (e.g., “multiculturalism”)"

The term PC MC (politically correct multi-culturalism) can denote either "one discrete part" or it can denote a comprehensive paradigm shift that has occurred over the past 50-odd years throughout the West. It is the latter understanding that I have been analyzing on my blog.

I think Auster's term "liberalism" in fact gets a crucial aspect of the problem wrong, but that's a whole hornet's nest for another day, another venue.

"I also point out in passing that you are criticizing Auster for the opposite reason that Steve Burton does: He says Auster is too harsh; you say Auster is too soft. But if Auster is too soft, Burton, Steyn and the rest of the conservative establisment deserve far more of your criticism."

Well, yes and no. The softer analysts belong to a mass of millions. They thus merge into the comprehensive problem that becomes misleading when we attach too much significance to individuals (as Auster himself recognizes when recently he appropriately shot back at a commenter citicizing Bill Clinton for a pro-Islam speech he gave: Auster said, so what? Clinton is just going with the flow, and it's the flow that is the more pertinent focus of our critical analysis.) I guess my attention has been on constructive criticism from within our movement of those who are on the spearhead of the supposedly stronger stance. This isn't to say I would never consider criticizing a Burton or a Steyn in the future, just that it isn't my priority. In this respect I have also criticized Spencer (I had an entire blog dedicated to critical analyses of Spencer's defects in certain aspects of his methodology). I continue to believe this is time well spent: it's part of the division of labor of any movement, and part of the health of a movement to be able to accept, digest and learn from criticism. Only paranoid dictators, thugs and psychos become fearful of criticism and try to suppress it. Any movement that proceeds this way is no movement that will ultimately last, and any strength in numbers it might gather will really be only a superficial strength, not a real strength in the end.

I'll take a look at your link when I find time, thanks.

Posted by Hesperado | June 18, 2009 6:18 PM

I not only agree with Hannon's point, but also think that "intellectually dishonest" is not a precise enough term for what Auster does (and he has done it more than once in my experience). The term assumes that he must be a liar. There are other reasons beside mendacity why people misrepresent the positions of their interlocutor and stubbornly persist in doing so even after cogent counter-arguments are presented to them. Some people have addled mentation, even otherwise intelligent people. I believe Auster is one of them. The liar charge is so serious, it should be reserved for special occasions. It is by no means ruled out in the case of Auster, but plenty of other indications in Auster's comportment support my view that he has a screw loose, and it is that which explains his perverse stubbornness and resistance to facts.

Perhaps the term "intellectually defective" would be preferable to "intellectually dishonest" -- for the former term describes the ostensible phenomenon, whereas the latter presumes a judgment absent sufficient evidence (for a liar must know he is lying even as he continues to lie, and we cannot know what's in Auster's head, unless we have in our possession a statement by him telling a confidante something like "I was lying about Steyn and I continue to lie about him for reasons advantageous to me").

That said, having a screw loose does not prevent a person from being otherwise intelligent and perspicacious, and even valuable -- though their value has to be utilized with extra caution, needless to say.

Posted by Hesperado | June 19, 2009 3:41 PM

The Punishment for Homosexuality according to Mohammed

2009-05-18T13:42:00.000-07:00

The Muslim writer of tafsir (exegesis) of the Koran quotes a Hadith from Abu Dawud which in turn quotes Mohammed:

"Whoever is found doing the act of the people of Lut, then kill them; the doer and the one it is done to."

The "Lut" referred to is the Arabic rendering of the Biblical "Lot": the "act" involved here is clear both from the Koran and Ibn Kathir's exegesis of it to be homosexuality.

Ibn Kathir also notes that in addition to Abu Dawud, other Muslim scholars -- Imam Ahmad, At-Tirmidhi, and Ibn Majah -- also recorded this Hadith.

The Unique and Complex Nature of the Danger of Islam

2009-05-16T14:13:00.000-07:00

This is a list of factors that all together make the threat of Muslims unique and complex.

These factors require that our response to that threat be appropriately matched to it. In my estimation, our appropriate response is perhaps best formulated in my essay, An Iron Veil.

The overarching problem pervading the list as a subtext is our inability to distinguish, with reliability sufficient for our safety needs, the difference between the harmless Muslims and the dangerous Muslims.

This overarching problem becomes enormous and crucial because of the following list of factors characterizing Muslims, and the Islam they support:

1) Taqiyya

The culture of deceit among Muslims informed by their Islamic culture and founding texts.

2) Fanaticism

The high degree of fanaticism among Muslims -- more effective and obsessive than the fanaticism of any other group in the history of the world -- informed by their Islamic culture and founding texts, and manifested in a wide variety of sociopathologies, including a readiness to be blown to bits in order to mass-murder Unbelievers; a readiness even to blow up one's own infant child in order to mass-murder Unbelievers; a readiness to demonstrate en masse in favor of killing for the crime of blasphemy; a readiness to riot and lynch those who are deemed to have attacked Islam or Mohammed; honor killings; the death penalty for activities such as adultery, homosexuality and witchcraft; a cruel and unusual justice system in sharia; the popularity of sharia among innumerable Muslims around the world; a tendency to repress free speech and free expression; a tendency to be stuck with dictatorial regimes; a paranoid suspicion, intolerance and hatred of outsiders; as well as the myriad rules of sharia law dictating what is forbidden and what is permitted reflecting a cult-like mentality of obsessive-compulsive meticulousness (if not often downright insanity) governing all facets of life.

3) The Supremacist-Expansionist Imperative

The blueprint for supremacist expansionism using violence grounded in the Koran and in the texts and traditions of the Sunna (and their equivalent in Shia Islam).

4) Literalist Belief in Religious Texts

A literalism more fanatical, obsessive and intellectually stultifying than that of any other religion in world history, powerfully and with sociological massiveness reinforcing not only #2 and #3 above, but all the points on this list.

5) Trans-national Networking

The international dispersion and networking of Islamic terrorism with regional, trans-national, and global goals.

6) Sociocultural Grapevines

The unique and diverse ways that Muslim societies facilitate complex and far-reaching associations and grapevines of communication and mobility, in ways that are unfamiliar to the West and difficult to comprehend let alone track, and which in turn facilitate ways that dangerous Muslims can network trans-nationally and intra-nationally within any given society in order to go about the painstaking, long-term business of getting all their ducks in a row for horrific attacks on us.

7) Passive Enablement of the Active Jihadists

The sociocultural tendency for a wider pool of mainstream and seemingly harmless Muslims to enable terrorist plotters -- ranging in a spectrum from passively countenancing them; to not informing authorities of suspicious behaviors; to actually letting their cousin Abdul use the back room of a restaurant for late-night “discussions” with his other Muslim friends; or letting their nephew Rasheed recieve many large packages in the mail over a long period of time using their PO box; or transporting on one's person a USB flashdrive with up to 7,000 files on weapons technology and weapons-making; and so forth, on to more and more active degrees of complicity.

8) Ultra-violence and WMDs

The readiness to deploy ultra-violence against those whom their fanaticism regards as enemies, further ratcheted up by the horrific potential of various flavors of WMDs we must assume are being actively sought by the plotters in order to find a way to use them against us -- in turn made all the deadlier by the willingness to mass-murder suicidally.

9) Cleverness and Creativity

The high degree of cleverness of the plotters in their adaptibility and creativity.

10) Camouflage as Moderates

The specific resort by the plotters to blend in with Westernized Muslims and try to avoid seeming “too Islamic” -- as an al Qaeda memo to its agents specifically advises. We must assume the high likelihood that the plotters are going to try to set up cells composed of Muslims who precisely seem impeccably “moderate” in order to avoid detection and in order to infiltrate that much more deeply into the fabric of our societies -- thus making the most dangerous Muslims precisely the ones that seem the most harmless.

Glazovianism

2009-01-22T09:51:00.000-08:00

The following are some comments by Jamie Glazov, editor of Frontpage Magazine, from an interview with Bruce Tefft who, as shall be seen, provided some apposite common sense as a contrast to Glazovian nonsense. It will become clear that what I call "Glazovianism" is essentially the same analysis as what I have called the "Pipes dream" concerning the problem of Islam, the latter being the analysis of Daniel Pipes -- and both represent a "low-end" asymptoticism so deep, if in fact they do not partake of the shark-infested waters of PC MC.

The Glazov comments are set off in italics, interspersed with my remarks in regular font:

. . . there are elements of Islam itself that inspire terror and that Islamic terror therefore is an outgrowth of Islam and cannot be washed away without a re-haul of Islam itself.

So far, this resembles asymptotic analysis (and we can see an echo of Spencer's "elements of Islam are the problem", not Islam itself).

At the same time, when facing our enemy, surely it is crucial to use terms such as "Islamofascism" or "radical Islam" to understand and confront the enemy because what we are facing is also a political movement and definitely not an entire religion or every Muslim.

Here, Glazov demonstrates an ignorance of the unique fusion of politics and religion in Islam, making his distinction worthless. He is superimposing a Western model upon the Muslim world, and categorizing the Muslims who are doing mischief as "political" Muslims, and the Muslims who are apparently doing no mischief as "religious" and therefore as probably harmless (if not, indeed, our viable allies against the "political" Muslims). In fact, this distinction of Glazov is not really worthless -- it is positively harmful to us. Again, though, unfortunately, this could still be asymptotic, on the low end of the scale.

Let us remember that millions of Muslims were and are victims, just like we are, of the radicals and fanatics in their midst. Many of them want to defeat the Islamo-fascists just as much as we do and it would be crazy and self-destructive for us not to ally ourselves with them.

This in my view crosses the line, or descends too far, from asymptotic to PC MC. Glazov has moved from merely categorizing the apparently harmless multitudes of Muslims with a superimposition of the Western model, to endowing these multitudes with a status of victimhood (which they would share with us Infidels, the main targets of jihad), and beyond that further to conferring upon these "millions" the function and honor of being our allies in solving the horrendous problem of Islam.

Glazov then goes off on a pointless tangent about the derivation of the term “Islamo-fascism”:

Let’s also keep in mind that the term “Islamo-fascism” was created by moderate Algerian Muslims who were being terrorized by Islamic fanatics who sought to impose Sharia law in Algeria.

Here, as elsewhere, Glazov commits the elementary and simplistic error of assuming that if a sociopolitically diseased population has internal victims, those internal victims must not be part of the dysfunctional nourishment of the disease. And Glazov goes further, as noted above, in elevating these co-dependent victims of the disease into our allies. This is flawed even absent the other major problem: our inability to sufficiently distinguish the genuinely harmless Muslim from the deceptively harmless but really (in one degree or another) dangerous Muslim; an inability due not solely to the Islamic culture of deception, but also due to uniquely complex sociological features of Islamic culture whereby there subsists a co-dependence among passive Muslims and more actively dangerous Muslims -- a co-dependence on various levels, from the psychological, to the sociological, to the more concrete levels of communications networks, propaganda, and facilitation in a variety of ways of different forms of jihad operations.

Glazov continues:

And the term is historically based – since radical Islam is linked to fascism. After all, Hassan al Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood (from which today’s radical Muslim groups descend) was an open admirer and supporter of Adolf Hitler -- as was the principal theorist of the modern jihad, Sayyid Qutb.

Glazov here is implying that our problem with Islam is modern because infused with inspiration from Western fascism and Nazism, and thus is not essential to Islam itself, but somehow a historical accident. This too would make easier our project of finding "millions" of allies from the ocean of Islam -- allies who are true "religious" Muslims as opposed to those who are twisting Islam to suit their "political" goals.

Then Glazov incoherently lurches in another direction by which we can exculpate and avail ourselves of these "millions" of potential Muslim allies. He iterates the Spencer template for articulating the problem with those "elements" of Islam that cut deep into its center (but somehow strangely manage, in the perspective of both Glazov and Spencer, at least sometimes when they advert to this problem, to leave Islam itself unscathed):

In any case, without doubt there is a serious problem with the theological roots of Islam, since the instruction for all believers to wage war against all unbelievers in found in the Qur'an in Suras such as 9:29 and 9:5. All the schools of Islamic jurisprudence teach that it is part of the responsibility of the umma to subjugate the non-Muslim world through jihad. And yes, Islam rejects the separation of Church and State. So definitely, as you suggest, Islam itself and what it teaches is a serious problem."

So if now "Islam itself" is the problem, then our Muslim salvation will be Muslims who are less Islamic!

But much of our hope lies in those Muslims who want -- and practice -- a relaxation of their theological beliefs and who seek to lead some kind of reformation in their religion and cancel out the calls for violent jihad in their religious texts etc.

This tends to contradict his previous paradigm by which it was only the politicized Muslims who were the problem, not the "religious" Muslims. Now Glazov is superimposing another Western model upon Muslims, closely related to the previously mentioned superimposition: that religion undergoes progress of reform and through that reform becomes more and more secularized and "relaxed". Glazov has no evidence for the validity of such a superimposition: at best, we simply have the evidence of multitudes of Muslims currently not doing any mischief. Worse than that, we have a tiny minority of Muslims expressing sentiments that sound to us more or less vaguely reformist (and sound like music to the ears of the naive among us like Glazov); but which on closer inspection turn out to be strangely incoherent, due either to some form of psychopathy, or to deception on their part, or perhaps a combination of the two.

Whether or not this can be done remains the painful and agonizing question, seeing erasing large segments of Islamic teaching, and overturning 1,400 years of history, is by no means an easy task.

More important than whether this fantastic process of Muslims sufficiently reforming Islam so that they can help us solve the problem of their own Islam is "painful" and "agonizing", is whether it is realistic or not, and whether even holding it out as a viable hope is not rather to be perilously counter-productive to our primary concern for safety in the decades ahead.

Tefft then interposes some common sense:

I understand what you say, and I've heard this argument before: "radical" Muslims kill and terrorize other Muslims as well so they must be different from the "moderates" that they are terrorizing. I don't think so. As with any group of human beings, there are factions in Islam and personal ambitions and petty egos of various leaders which will them to power. So there are conflicts between Muslims as well as between Muslims and everyone else. However, those Muslims killing other Muslims (which is forbidden in the Koran) do not view the "others" as true Muslims but rather as 'takfir' or apostates, thus not true Muslims and therefore subject to the same killing as the rest of us.

Like Nazism, Islam is an ideology one chooses to adhere to. Were there "good" or "moderate" Nazis? If not, then no one can claim that there are good or moderate Muslims as they are voluntarily subscribing to an ideology that advocates murder, torture and jihad and does not permit its follower to cherry-pick which parts they believe in. The requirement to accept the Koran as the literal word of God also carries with it the obligation to accept it all. And as you say, the Koran instructs all Muslims to wage war against non-Muslims and all schools of Islamic thought instruct the subjugation of the non-Muslim world through jihad. Therefore, I do not believe it wise to attempt to create artificial distinctions between Muslims that don't really [exist?] as far as their attitudes towards non-Muslims is concerned.

As the prime minister of Turkey recently said: There is no radical nor moderate Islam. That is an insult to Muslims. There is only Islam.

We may wish to give Muslims the benefit of doubt, due to our humanistic and liberalized Western way of thinking. But treating the enemy as we wish they were, than as they are, will only lead to our ultimate defeat.

I would slightly massage Tefft's last statement thusly:

"But treating the enemy as we wish they were, rather than as what our limitations in knowledge force us to conceive, will only lead to our ultimate defeat."

Glazov responds this time with recourse to the Pipes template:

Well sir, again, it is not Muslims that are the problem. Islam is the problem. There are many Muslims who want a modernized and democratic Islam – Salim Mansur, Thomas Haidon, Kamal Nawash and Mustafa Akyol are among them.

Not only is this template flawed, but every time a pitiful handful of Muslims are trotted out as poster children for the "reformist" who is not only "not the problem" but represents our salvation from that problem, the names offered do not stand up to scrutiny. The names Glazov offers here present various combinations of the following problems:

1) they represent a pathetically small sub-minority among Muslims (cf. Kamal Nawash's attempt at a reformist Muslim rally in Washington, D.C., that resulted in a only a few people showing up, mostly non-Muslims).

2) the Islam they articulate bears no resemblance to the Islam that is massively the problem now, and which has been a problem for all its geopolitical neighbors for 1400 years right back to Mohammed. In effect, as Hugh Fitzgerald has put it, they concoct their "own private Islam", which will have negligible traction among the vast majority of Muslims, insufficient for the role Glazov, in his painful and agonizing hope, confers upon it.

3) These Muslims continue, in one way or another, to revere the Koran and Mohammed, which makes them either psychopathic or deceivers (the third exculpatory explanation, that they are ignorant of the Koran and Mohammed, won't fly) -- neither one a good basis on which to build a workable alliance. And the ones who try to gymnastically contort themselves into a simultaneous reverence for the Koran and cherrypicking of its bad parts (the group Muslims Against Sharia) are even more preposterous and useless.

4) And sometimes a little scratching on the moderate patina of a given Muslim proferred as our hope yields sinister darkness beneath, as with one of the Muslims on Glazov's little list -- Mustafa Akyol (as with his unabashed and enthusiastic support for Fethullah Gulen whose statements in prior years, about how the Muslim seeking to conquer the world needs to pretend to be moderate in order to deceive so that the jihad project may be facilitated, have never been repudiated (not that repudiating them would really make a difference anyway)).

And these reformers and moderates oppose the extremists in their religion just as much as any one us.

Perhaps "just as much", but certainly not in the same way as we do -- and that is key, as articulated in points 1-4 above.

...yes, there is a big question if the Islam with Islam taken out of it can remain an Islam at all. But there is a verse in the Qur’an (2:256) which states: "There is no compulsion in religion." As Daniel Pipes has pointed out, this verse, though very complicated in the many interpretations surrounding it, can serve as a foundation to a more enlightened Islam.

Again, Glazov and Pipes are superimposing the Western model of religious progress onto Islam, with no justification other than their anxious hope that it can, and/or must, be true.

Pipes profoundly notes that Islam can be what its believers make it, they “can decide afresh what jihad signifies, what rights women have, what role government should play, what forms of interest on money should be banned, plus much else.”

Pipes can "profoundly note" this, but all he is "profoundly noting" is what Islam "can be" -- not what it is likely to be. We do not have the luxury of sitting around waiting and hoping for what Muslims "can do" like the little engine that could. Too much is at stake. Our safety is our primary concern, and there are many ways in which concretizing the Pipes Dream will be positively reckless and dangerous for our safety.