A kind word turneth away wrath

Drone strikes. Another one of those things we like to oppose for reasons with holes in them.  Malala Yousafzai, the young Nobel Peace Prize winner told the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner last Friday that drone strikes fuel terrorism and kill innocent people.  Somehow I recollect the saying that being against bad doesn't make you good.  It doesn't make you make sense either.

Is it the use of an unmanned vehicle that makes bombing terrorist targets wrong?  Would we be better off  using billion dollar manned vehicles that are less accurate and far more risky for US personnel?  Send in another 100,000 troops?   Would we be better off not doing anything and as she suggests just give Pakistan more money for "Education" in the phantasmagoric hope that it will somehow not be used to teach Islamic intolerance for so much of what we hold dear, including freedom for young women like Malala Yousafzai?  Surely that would work as well as the billions and billions and billions we're already given them while they housed bin Laden. 

Drone strikes, like Gluten and fruit sugar, is an enemy without portfolio and it's not surprising to hear it from someone hoping that somehow the insanity and hatred infesting Islamic culture will simply go away if we ignore it, or at most address al Qaeda and ISIS and the Taliban with a little more understanding.  Maybe they'll see the error of their ways if  we all are just a little more patient. 

God's bloody cleaver

"The only reasons we killed this man ... is because Muslims are dying daily,"

said the man, holding a bloody cleaver and standing over the body of a British soldier hacked to pieces.  Muslims are dying.  Actually everyone is, even Atheists, but being part of the Middle Eastern religious tradition, followers of one prophet or another see themselves as different; as special to the point where they'll murder their own to prevent the "dishonor" of disobedience and they'll sure as hell kill you for not recognizing your goddamn specialness, you infidel!

There's something we have to realize: that Christian, Jew or Muslim, there is a thread running through our history and our 'scripture' that execrates deviation, heresy and all forms of non-conformity and puts all wisdom in the past, but right now, the people who are cutting off hands and heads and genitalia identify themselves as Muslim, whether or not other Muslims tell you that this isn't what their religion is about.  Perhaps they're right and perhaps the Inquisition was an aberration too, but this is now and for the most part the bombers, the hijackers, the kidnappers, the decapitators are talking about the God revealed by Mohammad  -- a God like all Gods who silently watches and does nothing unless we do it in his name.  Every Faith is a potential weapon.  Every one.

So the World Trade towers were blown to hell because we were "bothering" Muslims.  Perhaps we were, but then it doesn't take much, does it?  It doesn't take much when just walking on their "holy" sand without believing their holy horseshit is enough to get you killed and your family too.

So the Boston bomber wrote that this was all because we infidels were killing them  -- Muslims were dying, never mind why and never matter that for the most part it's because they've been killing us. We did far, far worse to the Third Reich and the Empire of Japan, yet they've pretty much eschewed violent revenge and it's a better world for it.  Religion doesn't compromise, doesn't allow experience to teach anything unless the experience appears in a myth from long ago, religion never forgets or forgives and so the quest for disgusting levels of retribution becomes part of the faith itself and it never ends.
 

 "This British soldier is an eye for an eye, a tooth for tooth," said the meat cleaver of God. "We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone."

Prime Minister James Cameron seems concerned that the reaction will include reprisals against innocent Muslims and stressed that these crazed killers were betraying Islam, but as I said, any religion is capable of producing such madmen and not very good at suppressing extremists and particularly when martyrdom is a cornerstone of the faith, particularly when God sits idly by as though he were impotent and the faithful see the need to get their hands bloody on his behalf, lest people doubt his "almighty" power.

 Is there really any way to leave them alone?  Will they ignore us if we ignore them?  Can they afford not to sell themselves as victims?  I think not.  I think that to risk having the faithful realizing that the poverty and ignorance in Islamic countries has much to do with Islam itself is unacceptable.  They have to blame it on the west.  When I hear that they'll never stop fighting, I believe it and I believe Cameron when he says the British will never give in either.  There simply isn't any way to do that, because when religion is involved, it's always a battle till the death.

What is it about Islamic fundamentalists?

Anybody who knows me (statistically, damned few of you) is aware that I am not a faithful churchgoer. And some of you probably worked that out from my nom de blog.

However, for all that unbelievers in America face discrimination, idiocy and occasional threats, we have it better than people in some parts of the world.

I tend to reserve most of my bile for Christianity, mostly because it's the religion that keeps trying to take over America. Which happens to be where I live. I don't happen to appreciate people trying to shove their beliefs down my throat - I'm not going to compare it to rape, but there are philosophical similarities. Much in the way that a house fire would be similar to a nuclear holocaust, but still...

In fact, due to the excessive and overwrought hatred of Muslims that is typically found among members of the Right Wing, I've tended to shy away from pointing out the less-brilliant aspects of Islamic beliefs. But let me just say this.

Muslim societies, on the whole, are less advanced than those of us in what they call the "West." Their educational levels frequently aren't even on a par with Mississippi, they are roughly as set in their ways as the Catholic church, and they share many beliefs with the Westboro Baptist Chuch. And they have an unpleasant tendancy toward violence similar to members of the NRA.

Bangladesh, for example, is nominally a secular democracy, but they seem to have forgotten what "secular" actually means. When Bangladesh gained independance from Pakistan in 1971, they set up a constitution that included "Four State Principles" - Secularism, Democracy, Nationalism and Socialism (factors which were upheld in Bangladeshi court in 2010).

However, with a population that is almost 90% Muslim (89.4% in 2010), they seem to be adding two more principles: Bigotry and Intolerance.

And Violence. So maybe three principles. (I could add "Murder," but it would rapidly grow into a Monty Python sketch about the Muslim Inquisition.)

See, there's an atheist blogger in Bangladesh named Asif Mohiuddin. In January, he was attacked in an apparent murder attempt, by three men who tried (but failed) to stab him in the throat. A month later, on 15 February, another atheist blogger, Ahmed Rajib Haider, was hacked to death in a machete attack in Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh.

For the crime of making himself a target, the surviving blogger, Asif, was arrested last Wednesday, and his blog on www.somewhereinblog.net ordered shut down by the government. He was the fourth blogger in two days to be arrested for "defaming Islam.".

The government is cracking down on athiests because Muslims are rioting. Which is, of course, the perfect response: you should always give in to violent threats. On 13 March, the Prime Minister's office formed a committee tasked with identifying "blasphemous" bloggers.

Earlier in the week, four online writers were arrested on charges of hurting Islamic religious sentiments in a country where 90 percent of people are Muslims.

Following recent protests over the war crimes tribunal, the government has blocked a dozen websites and blogs to stem the unrest. It has also set up a panel, which includes intelligence chiefs, to monitor blasphemy on social media.

Under the country’s cyber laws, a blogger or Internet writer can face up to ten years in jail for defaming a religion.

What is it about radical Islam that causes them to attack and kill anyone they disagree with? If girls try to go to school, they get shot. Cartoonists who draw pictures of Mohammed are attacked with axes. Being "too Western" or committing "sexual impropriety" will get a woman murdered by her family.

Now, among Christians, the percentage of fundamentalists varies: in the Bible Belt (sociographically, the "East South Central Region" - Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Alabama), it stands at about 58%, while in New England, it climbed slightly during the Bush era to 13%. If we assume that the same percentages hold for the Islamic peoples, that's still a buttload of fundamentalists. And in any religion, it's the fundamentalists who make the worst neighbors.

Here's the thing. Islam has been round for about 1400 years. Know what Christians were doing at about the same point in their history? Crusades and Inquisitions: killing people of other religions, and locking people up for daring to speak against them. The only difference is, modern Muslims have access to more technology than Christians did in the Middle Ages.

You have to wonder if this is a cycle that all major religions go through.

Water sports and frozen treats

So, what we have here is a semi-major blogger, Debbie Schlussel, leaping to a blatantly ignorant conclusion... No, wait, I'm sorry. Please replace the end of that sentence with "openly lying."

And then put a period after it. That should pretty much cover everything.

See, Debbie's not as famous as, say, Pammycakes over at Atlas Snores, but she's just as Islamophobic. Debbie, after all, is the one who thought it was great that reporter Lara Logan was beaten and sexually assaulted in Cairo during the riots (it "warmed (her) heart" that people could see what savages these heathen be), or who calls for full-on genocide against all Muslims everywhere ("Rot In Hell, Osama Bin Laden. One down, 1.8 billion to go... many of ‘em inside U.S. borders") despite proudly proclaiming herself "granddaughter of immigrant Holocaust survivors" (Cognitive dissonance is her stock in trade, after all).

But she's willing to go to the mat for her fantasy causes. Case in point:

Philly Muslim Ice Cream Truck Driver Had Urine Popsicles to Sell

Was Muslim ice cream truck driver Yasser Hassan planning to serve “urine popsicles” to non-Muslim Philadelphia area kids? It’s not clear, but Hussein was drunk driving his ice cream truck in the area and police found at least one bottle of frozen urine in the refrigerator that was used to store ice cream sold to children. They also determined that the condition of the entire truck and the ice cream was unsanitary. But, no worries, as the Koran and the Hadiths would say it’s okay to sell this to infidel kids. Oh, and like all the good Muslims who preach to us not to do this and not to do that, he had quite a bit of alcohol in his system and in his truck, despite the fact that this is haram (forbidden) in Islam.

At the moment, there are 54 responses, ranging from "Damn those Islamic types!" to "OMG!! we should Sind all theese terrerist ragheads back to irak where They cum from!!1!"

There could be 55 responses, but there aren't. See, I've done long-haul driving, most often in nuclear convoys. Here's the one response that Debbie decided didn't make the cut editorially.

OK, y’all can feel free to be stupid about this if you want, but people who spend all day in their truck often pee in bottles. And I’m thinking that with an ice-cream van, that’s even more true: it’s harder to lock up. (From experience: if he was smart he was using a gatorade bottle – wider mouth.)

The problem is especially bad with long-distance truckers. The problem is so widespread that some lawmakers have had to take action.

You can google “urine bomb” or “pee bomb” on your own, if you try.

It's not pretty, but it's the truth. But they don't care about "facts" over there in Spittle-Flecked City.

Passion play

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

___________

If you managed to get through grade school, you've read this many times, but it never seems to influence the way Americans act or feel: a syndrome which seems more influenced by mob psychology and sectarian chauvinism than anything else. Of course it's long been this way and we've long been a xenophobic and gullible nation, but with the advent of round-the-clock swineherds like Fox, the grunting and squealing of feral hog America is drowning out the voice of our founding fathers and of decent men and women everywhere.

"even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service." (Ben Franklin)

The same folks who want to persecute Muslims for their religion and prohibit the free exercise thereof will assert, without twitching their nostrils at the smell of hypocrisy, that this is a Christian nation and that Christian laws, whatever they might be, supersede our national laws about abortion, birth control, spending government funds on Christian activities and browbeating children into theological submission. It's not OK that a Muslim man doesn't want to drink alcohol or a Jew doesn't want to eat pork, but it's fine that a Christian pharmacist refuses to dispense condoms. Damn the constitution, we're a Christian nation. The laws of other religions need not apply and in fact, although there is no chance whatever that the United States will adopt the Quir'an as a replacement to the Constitution and body of laws, it's not enough for the grunting pigs of God who would like to make the free exercise of Islam illegal.

He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with
grief. (Isaiah 53:3)

The latest crusade seems to be about portraying every comment by every Muslim as an example of Sharia, from a cabby in Detroit asking that he not be forced to transport alcohol to someone praying in Arabic in front of the white house. According to one witness, he was asking for a blessing on those "Christians" who seemed oblivious to the staggering irony of a mob mocking and cursing a bearded man, bent in prayer, forgiving them for persecuting him. None of this has anything to do with any effort to replace our laws and courts with Islamic laws or Islamic judges nor can it since no effort exists. As to the rules of private observance - let's let only Christians do that! The only credible attempt or theocratic pretenders to the throne of course is by self-styled Christians, as the porcine squeals of the glossolalians Palin and Huckabee would prove.

"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Musselmen. . ." (George Washington)

Perhaps it's fortunate that such people are stupid enough to hoist themselves with their own petty petards. You'll recall and perhaps with a smile, Oklahoma's attempt to thwart the non-existent Islamic take-over by attempting a tin foil hat law banning all religious commands -- which in effect banned the Jewish commandments they had been trying to insert into American life, but we can't afford to depend on their congenital stupidity when so much is at stake. And yes, it takes a stupid man to think that somehow Americans would decide to write Sharia or Islamic tribal practices into American law in open defiance of the Constitution or that the tiny percentage of Muslim Americans would somehow magically or accidentally do it by themselves.

The courts have decisively ruled that the establishment and free exercise clauses forbid the Federal and State to prefer one religion to another, or religion to irreligion or atheism. The Torah, the Bible, the Quir'an, the Gita, the works of Nietzsche: state or Federal government may not adopt any of them as preferable, much less mandatory. But we're a little people, a silly people - greedy, barbarous, and cruel people if I might borrow from T.E. Lawrence -- and a cowardly, ignorant and hateful people as well. "Conservative" legislators continue and will persist in thriving on our traditional sins by inventing threats which must be countered by measures to accelerate our inexorable descent into looserhood. They'll continue to demonize the way their predecessors demonized German, Irish, Italian, Mexican, African, Catholic, Jewish, Chinese and Indian immigrants and history will continue to prove them wrong.

The Angle of reflection

A significant part of the Republican "message" has been that our secular laws derive from a largely mythical "Judeo-Christian" system of values. Yes, the adage about strange bedfellows is true, but politics and religion, being in bed together, tend to spawn strange offspring and to dress them up as reason and decency.

Of course it's true that a great number of our laws do reflect religious prohibitions, biases and attitudes and those laws often criminalize behavior that involves no harm to people or property and interferes with personal liberty, but those taboos seem to be shared by a great number of cultures which adhere to religions from Animism to Confucianism. There's little that's unique about our alleged Christian values and from the start, many of those values were at odds with our independence and our freedom. Yes, it's hard to think of a religion of any kind that has no rules of behavior but we're talking about Americans -- the people at the center of the universe who don't really think much about thinking or the necessity of reason.

So when we pass laws forbidding dancing on Friday, the observation or rejection of Christmas, the reading of certain books: when we make laws concerning who may live together, have sex together and in what way, we have illustrations of religious law intruding into secular life in America. Such things are slowly eroding and always changing, of course, but the prospect of a group that has always composed a small minority in the US: The Muslims, supporting certain religious rules within their own congregations and amongst their adherents, seems to have all the bells in the national belfry ringing in discord.

Islamic religious law, says Sharon Angle, is "taking hold" in some American cities and that's a "militant terrorist situation." No, really. I suppose it's wildly different in a terrorist sort of way for Jews to forbid Pork and Lobster or cheeseburgers or to require prayer at certain times and even to mandate beards or distinctive clothing. I suppose it's not the same thing for Catholics to forbid divorce and require celibacy of certain people and distinctive clothing for the clergy. The special Mormon underwear? Prohibitions against alcohol and coffee? Is the Church of Latter Day Saints "taking over" Utah and the constitution taken to the shredder? No, there's no militant terrorist situation there. Is there really a chance that the constitution will be supplanted by the Amish Ordnung even if an area has a majority of that peaceful faith? So why are we afraid and what are we really afraid of? Why does Sharon Angle say:

"It seems to me there is something fundamentally wrong with allowing a foreign system of law to even take hold in any municipality or government situation in our United States?"

Well, of course we wouldn't pay any attention to such a person as she if she weren't outrageous, but if we were a nation that could notice that these religious rules are in no respect taking hold of municipal governments and in fact are optional personal choices in a nation that allows us to make such choices freely, perhaps Sharon Angle would be all alone in some little room raving at the walls and not on national TV farting out her fallacies, misrepresentations and hysterical lies -- and God help us, running for the US Senate. Sure there would be something fundamentally wrong, but more certainly: it isn't happening here. Religion, say the courts, gives no license to break the law whether that faith demands we strangle a wayward daughter or drag a gay man behind a pickup truck or poison our congregation with cyanide.

The key word here is "Foreign." Although virtually all our religions are imported and many religious groups immigrated simply so that they could have communities with their own religious rules, Angle wants to reinforce the chauvinism of a certain kind of self-styled Christian who would be quite happy with a massively powerful government intent on substituting their own 'Christian' restrictions for our secular constitution. She is, most ironically, the best example of what she wants us to fear. Muslims and certain other people will always be "foreign" and most of us will never pause to reflect upon the horrible consequences that xenophobic, nationalistic bit of European bigotry had in the last century.

But we're not a nation of critical thinkers; at least not enough of us to give reason or even common decency a fighting chance. Bigotry, our real national religion, forbids it after all and we make demons out of people who don't want to participate or worst of all, don't want any religion forced on them.

Angle would like to pass on her contagious nightmare and indeed I know too many people who share it and who will refuse to be persuaded that even if we someday have an Ayatollah of Texas, he's not going to be able to use force to punish reprobates and infidels or have any more secular authority than an Archbishop or TV evangelist. They refuse to remember when Roman Catholics were a "foreign" religion to be feared for inquisitions and foreign rule over Americans. Somehow that "hopey-changey" thing did work our fairly well for them and for the many others who have had to contend with the Know-Nothing nativists and the Sharon Angles of their day.

No Muslims here!

I have to be thankful to the Anti-Defamation League, for without them, I might not be living here and they've done much to silence the skinheads and neo-Nazis and Jew haters that would still kill us all if they could. They've done much to get Church printing presses to stop printing the infamous "protocols" fraud and making them stop teaching that kill Christian babies for their blood. But as I've said countless times, being persecuted doesn't make one virtuous.

The ADL has jumped on the out of control bandwagon, protesting the building of the "Ground Zero Mosque" which isn't a mosque and isn't at Ground Zero. I don't know how to describe that without displaying it as offensive to the freedom of religion which is one of the few things an American can point to as being fundamentally American in origin, albeit no longer unique.

To what do we owe the self-righteous attitude behind it? We're furious at a group of terrorists almost small enough to fill a school bus and most of whom are dead: so furious that we don't want anyone to worship the God of Abraham in a different way within our sight. So furious that we will ignore the prohibition against establishing a religion as permissible or not permissible or restricting the rights of one as opposed to another. If Muslims have no right to a community center in New York, they have no right to a community and if they have not that, we have not reason to see this as a country worth supporting

Off with his hair!

Yes, it's hard to get behind anything the government of Iran does: stoning people to death, building nuclear weapons and all that, but to give credit where it's due, they do have the same lack of tolerance for certain hairstyles that I do and when it comes to demonstrating intolerance, Iran has few equals.

Yes, I'm all for freedom of expression, but there are limits and the mullet haircut is beyond that limit. As I'm concerned, ponytails on anyone over 60 and greasy spikes or Mohawks on anyone of any age are an abomination unto the Lord. So yes, I'd be right at home in the Islamic Republic and they certainly agree with me over there about what needs to be stomped out if the human race is to avoid divine retribution. Police in Iran can lop off that ponytail and that mullet can earn you jail time -- and rightly so. As I said, there are limits.

Of course, being a land of compassionate conservatism, Iran has provided an illustrated compendium of hairstyles that, according to Jaleh Khodayar, the man in charge of the government- backed Modesty and Veil Festival, are acceptable in light of "Iranians' complexion, culture and religion, and Islamic law." See for yourself:

Fear and loathing in Oklahoma

The Muslims are coming! The Muslims are coming! Some day, anyway -- it could happen, and Oklahoma isn't OK with it. I mean, we really need to trash our secular constitution and make judicial decisions rely on a few selected Jewish commandments palatable to Christian godbothers, but we are simply not going to sleep at night unless we make it illegal for Judges to be swayed by other, illegal religions like Islam; not in Oklahoma.

No, Okies need to "Save our State" and have proposed an amendment to the State constitution making it illegal for judges to reference Sharia or any other international law and as 0.8% of Oklahomans are Muslim, we can't waste any more time in saving the state from the bearded menace. What is needed is a "pre-emptive strike" says State Representative Rex Duncan (Republican of course.) "Court decisions ought to be based on federal law, or state law" says he.

Of course I agree that they should. yet Federal law just might have a problem with the legislature interfering with judicial decisions and process. Beyond that, I think Federal and State laws should be free of any dependence on Christian doctrines as well, but we're talking about Oklahoma here and we're talking about Republicans everywhere and how can we expect even a modest amount of moral or logical consistency?