Patterico's Pontifications

9/14/2014

Tim Rutten Gets It Right (No, Really!)

Filed under: General — JVW @ 11:09 pm



[guest post by JVW]

Columnist Tim Rutten has deservedly come in for withering criticism at these parts through the years (see here, here, here, and, oh, here and maybe here and here; can’t forget here either). He’s a committed leftist who always seeks to put conservatives in the worst possible light, and a blowhard to boot. However, just as with the old aphorism about the broken clock being accurate twice per day, Rutten once in a great while gets one right. Brace yourselves, friends: this is one of those times.

In today’s column, Rutten addresses the ills of Wahhabism as the antecedent of the Muslim Brotherhood, al Qaeda, ISIS, and the rest of the islamofascism that has become so prominent in Muslim countries:

While political Islam’s contemporary ideology is the work of mid-20th century Egyptian thinkers like Sayyid Qutb, the style of Muslim religiosity in which it flourishes is rooted in the Wahhabi creed that is the official religion of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Since the 18th century, when the puritanical religious zealot Muhammad ibn-Wahhab struck an alliance with the tribal leader Muhammad bin Saud, the family that today supplies Saudi Arabia’s royals has allowed the Wahhabi clerical establishment to dominate their people’s religious and social lives in return for political support. Even today, the kingdom’s minister of religious affairs always comes from among Wahhab’s descendants, the al ash-Sheikh family. More importantly, the Saudis have spent tens of billions from their petro-wealth to promote Wahhabism around the world. Today, its prestige is, as a result, unrivaled in the globe’s Muslim communities.

Naturally, because this is after all Tim Rutten we are dealing with, there has to be at least a few silly leftwing delusions:

Contemporary American notions of tolerance put us ill at ease when circumstances require condemnation of other people’s religious practice. . .

Because, you know, American liberals have been so reticent when it comes to condemning the beliefs of Roman Catholics, Evangelicals, and other religions who don’t gleefully adopt the modern groupthink on abortion, birth control, or homosexuality. Nevertheless, Rutten steps up to the plate and takes a mighty cut (at an admittedly slow pitch):

. . . but the time has come to deliver exactly that verdict on Saudi salafism. It is intolerant, repressive and obscurantist and has made the world a more dangerous place for us all. It preaches hatred of Jews, Christians, women, gays and even other Muslims. The international community of nations has put up with behavior on the Saudis’ part that would not be countenanced on the part of any other country in the world. No matter how much the Obama administration believes it requires Saudi assistance in the campaign against the Islamic State, it’s kidding itself if it thinks the kleptocratic and deceitful House of Saud is a reliable ally.

Sure, Rutten is unloading on an illiberal religion and that’s easy enough for any leftist to do, but I think we can all take solace in the fact that he did not try to temper his criticism of salafism with a critique of U.S. foreign policy over the past seventy years (especially under Republican Administrations) or some banal recitation of the shopworn idea that Islam is the Religion of Peace and that Wahhabis only comprise a very small subset. Note that he even registers a slight criticism of the Obama Administration’s deference to the House of Saud.

There will be plenty of opportunities to criticize Tim Rutten’s future musings, but for tonight let’s welcome him as an ally on this particular issue.

– JVW

76 Responses to “Tim Rutten Gets It Right (No, Really!)”

  1. The cynic in me wants to point out that Rutten possibly didn’t pay attention to the sheer depravity of ISIS until they started beheading his fellow journalists, but I will not look a gift horse in the mouth.

    JVW (638245)

  2. house of saud

    house of filth

    happyfeet (a785d5)

  3. Deference to the House of Saud is spelled with a capital “OIL”. If not for the oil in the Middle East, the area would be nothing but a big, ignored sandbox. At last, we are producing more and more of our own oil, no thanks to the clown in the White House.

    Bill M (906260)

  4. lets see what happens when his fellow juice boxers turn on him for this raycis article…

    Islime is the Religion of Pieces.

    redc1c4 (abd49e)

  5. PS: we should all go out and buy a lotto ticket tomorrow… O:)

    redc1c4 (abd49e)

  6. religions aren’t super-conducive to peace

    cause of how people believe in them really strongly

    and people are flawed

    but the terrorisms and the terror monkeys are a cultural thing what goes way beyond islam

    duh

    they give the game away in their name

    Islamic State

    these people are

    a.) hyper-nationalists

    and

    b.) losers

    it really isn’t Islam what’s the problem here

    it’s more – partly anyways – that you have these Saudi Royal Pervert types in charge of everywhere these people might make a normal life for themselves

    I’d be pissed-off too

    happyfeet (a785d5)

  7. Remember 15 of the 19 terrorists of 09.11 were Saudi nationals. And we then attack Afghanistan and Iraq. There is something missing there.

    Ipso Fatso (10964d)

  8. The Saudis fund Wahabi mosques here in the US, and elsewhere. Why aren’t those places empty? Why haven’t the local Muslims gone to mosques with less murderous doctrines?
    Richard Aubrey

    RA (f6d8de)

  9. Rutten is …

    … kidding himself if he thinks the kleptocratic and deceitful House of Obama is a reliable ally.

    papertiger (c2d6da)

  10. Saudi Arabia forms an unattractive society. However, the dynasty is indigenous and its disagreeable features were organic developments within that society. In addition, their government is not revanchist in character and has followed a foreign policy governed by reasons-of-state. They’ve always been a status quo power in the Near East. No reason to pick any fights with them.

    Art Deco (ee8de5)

  11. The Sauds are Golden Apes and that’s insulting apes. Thieves and conmen who are where they are because they knew which foreign power to put the kneepads on for. The Ottomans, the British, toyed with the Nazis for a bit, and now they have us. They are as trustworthy and reliable as hyenas and smell worse.

    nk (dbc370)

  12. JVW – I don’t think that is the least bit cynical.

    JD (d3c994)

  13. BTW, Arabs (and other strict Muslims) don’t hate-hate gays. They like them well enough in their brothels and in backalleys. In places like Saudi Arabia, Afganistan, backwoods Pakistan, etc., where women are barely glimpsed, the incidence of pederasty and homosexuality is higher than Francisco’s. Like prisons, for an illustration.

    nk (dbc370)

  14. Richard Crooke, a former MI-6 official who’s keen on Hamas, made a similar argument on the Puffington Host, (without irony) here is the thing though, none of the hijackers were Saudi, they came from the tribes of Ghamdi, Ateyba, Quahtani et al, as you will find with the leaders in Chechnya, the original cell in the Peninsula, attackers in Iraq,

    narciso (ee1f88)

  15. There are good Muslims in the world, and they do deserve some respect and tolerance in a world where Islamofascist terrorism and hatred has given their religion a bad name.

    But I’m always frustrated by the idea that tolerance requires respect for intolerance and violence, as though I am not equipped to judge without being ethnocentric. We know, and they know, that flying planes into buildings or stoning women to death for being raped, or the many other persecutions are evil. Those Muslims I say are good are the most victimized by those Muslims I call Islamofascist.

    With most other religions, and certainly the major ones, the original texts are so ancient, and often oral traditions put into ancient writing after a few generations. Interpretation isn’t just an option, it’s a requirement, and there is necessarily a subjective element to interpretation, and religious scholars will ‘call on faith’ to get it right. In this way, Judaism and Christianity have been able to ‘overlook’ some aspects of their texts that would cause problems in modern society. This modernization of Islam is, at least, much more difficult. So I don’t see how this problem is supposed to get better. Widespread honesty about the problem would be pretty helpful, but in America, that’s often interpreted as intolerance of a faith rather than intolerance of the obvious evils committed. But the hard truth is that if someone says that faith must incorporate those evils, then that faith actually is evil.

    This is a great post, JVW. I don’t even care of Rutten’s clarity is due to his seeing other journalists beheaded. Evil slaps the sleepy awake sometimes, and I’ll take what I can get when it comes to clarity in this world.

    Dustin (801032)

  16. A close reading of the Rutten column also suggests that his research, such as it is, consisted of reading two different pieces in The New Republic, so the laziness of his thought process continues unabated even if it does lead him to a sensible conclusion.

    Man, see how hard it is to praise Rutten?

    JVW (638245)

  17. Ah shucks. Once Tim Rutten was canned by the Los Angeles Times, I had hope that I would never have to hear from him again. So now he’s spreading his shoddy wares in the Los Angeles Daily News. Well that’s one more paper I won’t bother to read. But for the sports section I wouldn’t bother to read the Times. This is a result of my long held view that the Los Angeles Times long ago ceased to be a serious newspaper. (And as long as it continues to feature Hiltzik, it has no hope of ever being serious.)

    Even reading the Times sport section is a hard slog due to the presence of the preening, prevaricating, pompous, posturing putz Bill Plaschke, who is ever ready to show off his liberal superiority over the unwashed masses like me when it comes to questions of morality and ethics. Just report the result Plaschke and stop the preaching to the Beverly Hills choir.

    Skeptical Voter (12e67d)

  18. Perhaps you missed it, but the left has been bashing the House of Saud for a generation because of its close ties to the Bush family. Michael Moore’s movie, Fahrenheit 9/11, which I’m sure none of us watched, makes much of the Bush-Saud relationship. Is the Rutten column a welcome piece of commentary? Indeed. Does it mark a significant departure from conventional lefty thinking? Not hardly.

    ThOR (130453)

  19. The one good thing caused by Obama’s dithering is that he is making the Saudis very, very nervous. They have played a double game all these years: let us preach hate, and we will sell you oil. (Oh, and give you $300,000 for your speeches.)

    They have always counted on the US to rush in and put out the fires that Wahabbism has started. And we have complied and lost so many of our best. Now the flames are edging closer to the Kingdom, and they don’t like it. Embrace the suck that you have created, boys.

    Patricia (5fc097)

  20. Does it mark a significant departure from conventional lefty thinking? Not hardly.

    I probably wasn’t as explicit in my post as I should have been. You are correct that the left has not been shy about criticizing the House of Saud, but this is the first time I can remember that the criticism hasn’t been packaged with the usual critique of U.S. foreign policy and our dependence on fossil fuels and our support of Israel, et cetera, et cetera. For Rutten to come out and say, “Hey, Wahhabism is a really awful strand of Islam and should not be tolerated,” and leave it at that is a significant development in my book. Why next thing you know, the left might start wondering about where the money is coming from to fund all of those Middle Eastern Studies Departments at the left’s favorite universities around the U.S.

    JVW (638245)

  21. Saw the videos did he?

    f1guyus (647d76)

  22. @20 JVW(638245) the left might start wondering about where the money is coming from to fund all of those Middle Eastern Studies Departments at the left’s favorite universities around the U.S.

    But that would require thought, something in short supply among the members of the left-leaning community.

    Bill M (906260)

  23. I think this commentary by Rutten is good news and I’m glad you brought it to my (our) attention.

    For some truly perverse reason, the left has been married to a “the enemy of our enemy is our friend” strategy for a very long time (for the left, the enemy has always been the U.S. and its citizens). The left’s reflexive embrace of Islam, even relatively moderate Islam, to the extent such a thing exists, makes no sense at all – it is hard to imagine two world view more at odds with each other than western liberalism and traditional Islam. Perhaps it is simply because the left is now trying to justify Obama’s embrace of the Bush Doctrine and going to war against ISIS, but whatever the motivation, it is great news that at least some on the left are now beginning to see Islam for what it is and write/speak about it.

    Thank you for the post.

    ThOR (130453)

  24. a reminder,

    http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/twenty-eight-pages

    of course there were some interesting ties to Qatar, that wikileaks turned, from around that same period,

    narciso (ee1f88)

  25. 24.

    The Saudis have also publicly demanded that the material be released. “Twenty-eight blanked-out pages are being used by some to malign our country and our people,” Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who was the Saudi Ambassador to the United States at the time of the 9/11 attacks, has declared. “Saudi Arabia has nothing to hide. We can deal with questions in public, but we cannot respond to blank pages.”

    Now, does he actually want it to be released, or does he not want it?

    It could be that the substance has leaked out, and as he says, they can make a defense, to the specifics. There might not be really anything not deniable in there.

    Yes, money that passed through his hands helped the hijackers, but there’s no smoking gun.

    I mean all they seem to have is:

    1) There was a certain Omar al-Bayoumi, on paper an employee of the Saudi aviation-services company Dallah Avco, but he apparently never did any actual work for the company, but he was in frequent contact with the Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C., and with the consulate in Los Angeles; he was widely considered in the Arab expat community to be a Saudi spy. Did I mention that I think PPrince Bandar was running spies in the United States?

    This Bayoumi supposedly accidentally met two future Sept 11 hijackers at a halal restaurant in Culver City, California, supposedly because he heard them
    speaking Arabic with Gulf accents, and found them an apartment where he lived, paying their security department and first month’s rent (for which they reimbursed him)

    He may have introduced them to Anwar al-Awlaki, who later was a candoidate for chief of al Qaeda in Yemen.

    2) There was another Saudi, Osama Basnan. He also became a friend of those two future
    hijackers.

    His wife was receiving money from Prince Bandar’s wife, Princess Haifa.
    The payments—which may have amounted to as much as seventy-three thousand dollars over a period of three years—were supposed to fund the treatment of a medical condition that Basnan’s wife suffered from.

    A lawsuit against the Saudis, claims some of that money went to support the hijackers in San Diego, but the FBI did not verify that.

    Tom Kean, of the 9/11 commission, says there is other stuff that
    is more important.

    Sammy Finkelman (e4c3a1)

  26. Thanks for commenting, ThOR.

    JVW (18e4e0)

  27. Rutten “apology” by Twitter in 10… 9… 8…

    MikeHs (03abc5)

  28. All roads lead back to Bandar.

    JD (a8ad04)

  29. They have always counted on the US to rush in and put out the fires that Wahabbism has started.

    Umm, where? The Iraqi government was (from 1968 to 2003) secular fascist in character. Iran is a chronic irritant, but the population and clergy there are predominantly Shi’ite. Hezbollah is likewise a Shi’ite organization. The Egyptian military, not the U.S. Government, is the principal nemesis for the Muslim Brotherhood. I suppose you could refer to the Taliban or the Islamic State as Wahhabi ‘fires’, but the more salient antecedent would be the ineptitude of the collection of militias who ruled Afghanistan from 1992 to 1996 and the institutions of the parliamentary regime in Iraq after 2003 (notably the hopeless Iraqi military).

    Art Deco (ee8de5)

  30. For the life of me, I don’t understand why it is our job to protect Muslims from themselves. Muslim on Muslim violence is a hallmark of the faith, dating to the time immediately following the death of Mohammad. To imagine the modern western world could have any meaningful impact on such a time-honored tradition is pure folly. It was folly for George W. Bush to believe that a democratized Iraq could function as a pluralistic state; it is folly for Barack Obama to believe that he can bring peace through military intervention in the ongoing crisis.

    When it comes to the Muslim world, the enemy of our enemy is often also our enemy. In such a world, internecine war is a win-win to those on the outside. If the west has any role at all to play, it would be to protect non-Muslims from the predations of their Muslim neighbors.

    Someday, perhaps, the Muslim world will join the West as people who love their children more than they hate their enemies. We will not hasten that day by refereeing conflicts that are a product of such hatred.

    ThOR (130453)

  31. …The Iraqi government was (from 1968 to 2003) secular fascist in character…

    A common misconception, that.

    After Desert Storm Saddam Hussein remade himself as the defender of Islam. The “secular” Baathist flag was modified with “Allahu Akhbar” written in script modeled on his own handwriting. People in the West dismissed his religious posturing as mere posturing. By and large Sunni Muslims in the ME did not do the same. A great many of them see Saddam Hussein as a source of pride for the way he defied America. He stylized himself as the symbol of Muslim resistance against the Christian West’s oppression, and that resonated throughout the region. They really did see him as the Muslim David standing up to the Crusader Goliath.

    Moreover because of his resistance to Iran he is still viewed as a defender of the Sunni identity and the Arab nation. Arabs are ashamed and disgusted by Iran’s heavy handed involvement in Iraq. They derisively call Qassim Suleimani, the commander of the Quds force of the IRGC, the “governor of Baghdad” because he is visibly the real power behind the throne. And they are not happy about it.

    When Saddam Hussein remade himself into the defend of the faith during the last decade of his rule, he also remade himself into defender of the Palestinians against the Zionists. His anti-Israel rhetoric, the fact that he sent rockets to the Palestinians, and that he provided financial support to Palestinian groups and the families of the so-called martyrs bought him a lot of good will on the Arab street. Both inside and outside of Iraq.

    If you visit Muslim discussion forums this attitude toward Saddam Hussein is typical and has been for at least the past six years.

    http://www.dubaiforums.com/philosophy-dubai/saddam-hussein-paradise-t49481.html

    Saddam Hussein recited the shahada (lengthened form) moments before his death.

    Does saying the shahada before death guarantee a free pass to paradise?

    …It’s interesting to note that most Muslim posters are sympathetic to Saddam and believe he’s in Paradise:

    And from the subject in front of us, concerning the belief upon which Saddam Hussein died, then there are a number of matters which prevent a ruling of apostasy, beginning with the general rulings followed by those which are more specific:

    1 – Such a ruling at this time would serve only the interests of the Crusaders and their treacherous agents, as mentioned by Shaykh Abu Basir at-Tartusi (hafidahullah).

    …4 – Saddam called for Jihad against the enemies of Islam and said that it was fard for the Muslims to fight against the invaders of Iraq.

    5 – He served as a thorn in the eyes of the Rafidah Shi’ites and helped prevent the spread of Shi’ism. So he stopped the expansion of the Rafidah revolution of Iran from spreading to Iraq and the Peninsula, as was the stated intention of the Khomeini gang.

    …7 – He helped unite the Sunni Muslims of Iraq and strengthened the call of Ahlus-Sunnah, creating an environment which would later nurture the call to Jihad and the Islamic state, whose foundations is one of Tawheed.

    8 – He invoked Islamic prayers and employed Islamic historical and religious themes, which ran contrary to the secular, kafir, Ba’athist ideology.

    …Add to this what occurred during his hanging, when the Rawafid executioners were taunting him with “Muqtada! Muqtada!”. So it was clear that the Shi’ites hated him since he stopped them from making Iraq into a Shi’ite state, which they have now accomplished with the aid of the Crusaders.

    …Saddam remained firm in the face of all these odds, and warned Muslims about the growing threat of Shi’ite expansionism represented by Iran and noted their hypocrisy when it comes to posing as the “defenders” of the cause of Palestine.

    And it was reported that before his final death, Saddam made the shahadah. The important thing to remember about this is that the execution was private and it was videotaped by secret only. So Saddam was a man facing his last minutes and yet he made affirmation of his Iman, the Islamic belief upon which he died.

    …We ask Allah to accept his martyrdom, use his death to waken the virtuous Ahlus-Sunnah Muslims of Iraq, to awaken the wider Ummah to the conspiracies of the enemies of Islam, whether they be from the Zionists, Crusaders, or the Rafidah…

    Steve57 (b19fda)

  32. We were subjected to years of nonstop braying from leftists that fighting terrorists in the Middle East only creates more terrorists. While it would not be at all unusual for the left to “conveniently” forget years of propagating such fiercely independent hive like group think, there is no reason to view the video beheadings as anything more than a deliberate strategy to provoke the West on the part of ISIS and therefore further boost already successful recruiting efforts among jihadis and potential jihadis who want to have fun.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  33. Maryknolls have killed no one conservatives have killed Maryknolls.

    rodham (ddbefd)

  34. blind pig… acorn…

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  35. poor Mohamed dead and gone, left me here to sing his song, pretty little goat with the red dress on, poor Mohamed dead and gone… http://freebeacon.com/issues/controversial-dhs-adviser-let-go-amid-allegations-of-cover-up/

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  36. I really feel pity for Perry’s hate-filled miserable existence.

    JD (a8ad04)

  37. Muslim on Muslim violence is a hallmark of the faith,

    State systems are state systems. I tend to doubt you could make an airtight argument that there’s been more inter-state violence in the Near East or North Africa or Central Asia than in Europe over a period of 1400 years.

    Art Deco (ee8de5)

  38. Steve57, if you’re trying to suggest that the Ba’ath regime was an outgrowth of Saudi promotion of Wahhabi schools of interpretation, I just do not think you’re gonna get there.

    Art Deco (ee8de5)

  39. State systems are state systems. I tend to doubt you could make an airtight argument that there’s been more inter-state violence in the Near East or North Africa or Central Asia than in Europe over a period of 1400 years.
    Art Deco (ee8de5)

    No, they are not.

    ThOR specifically called out violence against fellow believers as a key element of faith.
    He did not say violence against non-believers.
    He did not say general violence.
    And he did not say state-level violence.
    He said simply intra-faith violence as an element of faith.

    Raising the issue of general inter-state violence does nothing but attempt to distract from the direct point by a mass of statistics and forced attempts at creating moral equivalencies.

    The reality is that the Koran is quite clear that the least element of heterodoxy, variation, or development constitutes an absolute heresy that is worse than simple non-belief and so must be treated even more severely than any actions or resistance by non-believers.
    Conversely the Bible proclaims no such thing. Indeed the very history of Judaism and Christianity are defined by cooperative inquiry, debate, and development to the level of making the pronouncements of heresy, anathema, and schism stand out as stark examples of failure, and any conflict deriving from them typically condemned for destroying the faith and faithful rather than praised for restoring purity.

    Sam (e8f1ad)

  40. Maybe, maybe not. With some exceptions, these countries tend to have unremarkable homicide rates as well. If you’re talking intramural political violence, you’ve got a lot of history to cover if you’re locating the source in Islamic texts rather than in the dynamic of political conflict you might see in any country (e.g. Latin American, 1978-92).

    Art Deco (ee8de5)

  41. I really feel pity for Perry’s hate-filled miserable existence.

    Who is ‘Perry’? Is that the person who posts as ‘happyfeet’ or ‘mr. gop’?

    Art Deco (ee8de5)

  42. not happyfeet, he is who he is and is consistent
    “Perry” is somebody who was banned but always posts anyway with anyone of many names, currently mr. gop is one of them
    I can’t keep track of him, JD normally alerts us

    MD in Philly (f9371b)

  43. 41.Maybe, maybe not. With some exceptions, these countries tend to have unremarkable homicide rates as well. If you’re talking intramural political violence, you’ve got a lot of history to cover if you’re locating the source in Islamic texts rather than in the dynamic of political conflict you might see in any country (e.g. Latin American, 1978-92).
    Art Deco (ee8de5)

    Once again you are trying to obfuscate rather than dealing with the issue directly.

    Political conflicts in Latin America were not based on killing people for adopting Vatican II or not, or even just for being Baptists instead of Catholics.

    Perhaps if you wanted to compare the rates of Marxists killing each other over being Marxists, Leninists, Stalinists, Maoists, Trotskyites, Hitlerites, Mussolinites, or something else you could barely make a point, but then you’d have to deal with people not being interested in defending a Marxist terror state anymore than they do an Islamist terror state.
    Or would you like to explain how we are all wrong and that Marxists really are just as peace-loving as Islamists when dealing with themselves as well as others?

    Sam (e8f1ad)

  44. Funny how things change stay the same…

    “The effects are apparent in many countries, improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement, the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.”

    – Sir Winston Churchill

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  45. Sam, you are making some very good points.

    felipe (40f0f0)

  46. Yeah, Art Deco is practicing his Sociology 103 quiz answers on us.

    nk (dbc370)

  47. Once again you are trying to obfuscate rather than dealing with the issue directly.

    I am avoiding nothing. Interstate conflict, intramural conflict, and social conflict at all levels are parts of the human condition. The sources vary over time and place. If you locate the source in “Islam”, your implicitly offering a thesis that some component of this is worse, ceteris paribus, in the Near East or North Africa or Central Asia than anywhere else on earth and that this deficit is abiding. If you want to make a valid judgment to that effect you should have a much much more granular knowledge of the history of these places than anyone here is likely to have. Leave it for Bernard Lewis.

    Political conflicts in Latin America were not based on killing people for adopting Vatican II or not, or even just for being Baptists instead of Catholics.

    No, but political conflicts in 17th century Europe had a large element of that. You still see it sporadically in the occidental world where confession is a marker for nation (as it is in Ulster and in Yugoslavia). (I’m not exactly sure why killing over religious affiliation is worse than killing over political affiliation if the latter is not implicated in disruptions of daily life).

    Or would you like to explain how we are all wrong and that Marxists really are just as peace-loving as Islamists when dealing with themselves as well as others?

    Pretty irrelevant to anything I’ve said.

    Funny how things change stay the same…

    Just to note that the least affluent part of the globe would be Tropical Africa, which has no dominant religious dispensation.

    A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement, the next of its dignity and sanctity.

    Some Arab societies are very particular about manners. It’s part of the conflict in and around Israel because Israeli Jews are so unregulated in this regard.

    Art Deco (ee8de5)

  48. Art Deco wants to “regulate” the Jews. Gee, what could go wrong?

    felipe (40f0f0)

  49. 5,4,3

    felipe (40f0f0)

  50. Speech that poses a “clear and present danger” to public safety or threatens insurrection can be criminalized by the government. It doesn’t seem that big a stretch that if a religious sect was organized along lines that posed similar threats, the religion, or at least the offending aspects, could be criminalized.

    Kevin M (b357ee)

  51. So ‘from a certain point of view’ Steve, Baghdadi is in good company with much of the Sunnis in Anbar, one can really go back to Gailani’s Golden Square, which Saddam’s uncle was a part of,

    narciso (ee1f88)

  52. With five justices on the side of the government in the Supreme Court, wearing white after Labor Day can be criminalized. But it won’t get to the Supreme Court. Branch Davidians? Lois Lerner? If the government wants to stomp Muslims, it can stomp Muslims. Instead, it enforces Sharia rules on their employers.

    nk (dbc370)

  53. 39. Steve57, if you’re trying to suggest that the Ba’ath regime was an outgrowth of Saudi promotion of Wahhabi schools of interpretation, I just do not think you’re gonna get there.

    Art Deco (ee8de5) — 9/15/2014 @ 1:03 pm

    I supppose it’s a good thing I wasn’t trying to suggest any such thing.

    I’ve noticed Art Deco, that when you say one ridiculous thing…

    …The Iraqi government was (from 1968 to 2003) secular fascist in character…

    And get called on it, you follow it up with an even more ridiculous thing:

    …the Ba’ath regime was an outgrowth of Saudi promotion of Wahhabi schools of interpretation…

    Again, this is very Obamaesque of you. If Obama couldn’t use the failure of logic known as the false dilemma he’d be unable to make any argument at all.

    Apparently neither can you. It’s absolutely silly to suggest that the only two options we have when evaluating the nature of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship between 1991 and 2003 are:

    1) Secular fascist
    2) Wahhabi

    Which is why I would never make such a suggestion. Why did you?

    Steve57 (e9e6e7)

  54. I am avoiding nothing. Interstate conflict, intramural conflict, and social conflict at all levels are parts of the human condition. The sources vary over time and place. If you locate the source in “Islam”, your implicitly offering a thesis that some component of this is worse, ceteris paribus, in the Near East or North Africa or Central Asia than anywhere else on earth and that this deficit is abiding. If you want to make a valid judgment to that effect you should have a much much more granular knowledge of the history of these places than anyone here is likely to have. Leave it for Bernard Lewis.

    Yes you are. You are deliberately and repeatedly bringing up other issues that do not address the issue at hand.
    And now even as you challenge to expand the question to all modes of conflict you attempt to short-circuit discussion by an appeal to authority – all those other factors are relevant, but no one here is qualified to properly address them. Well, except of course you are qualified to deny everyone somehow. Funny that . . .

    No, but political conflicts in 17th century Europe had a large element of that. You still see it sporadically in the occidental world where confession is a marker for nation (as it is in Ulster and in Yugoslavia). (I’m not exactly sure why killing over religious affiliation is worse than killing over political affiliation if the latter is not implicated in disruptions of daily life).

    Some did.
    More did not.
    Indeed more had as a component the Salic Law on inheritance, with religion being little more than a convenient excuse, thrown aside at the first hint of realpolitik.
    Yes, it still rarely arises, though even then it is more often lost behind other issues, such as Marxism and Nationalism in Ireland and simple power aggrandizement on a linguistic division between Serbia and Croatia.

    As for whether or not killing over religion is better or worse than killing over political division, that is yet another obfuscation through an attempt to establish moral equivalency.

    Pretty irrelevant to anything I’ve said.

    Actually it is as totally irrelevant to anything you’ve said, just as everything you’ve said has been totally irrelevant to the point you are attempting to rebut.
    Not that I expect you to get the point, but there you have it.

    Just to note that the least affluent part of the globe would be Tropical Africa, which has no dominant religious dispensation.

    You mean a region that was subjected to centuries of Islamist slave raiding?
    Granted, you could mean a region that has been subjected to a century of Marxist insurrection, which is indeed the second most bloodthirsty ideology after Islam, but that does come after the centuries of Islamist assault.

    Some Arab societies are very particular about manners. It’s part of the conflict in and around Israel because Israeli Jews are so unregulated in this regard.

    Which of course completely misses the point.
    Israeli Jews, and the Anglosphere in general that Churchill was speaking for, are also very particular about manners. Indeed it is part of the conflict that Arabs are so degraded in this regard.
    Of course that means holding Arabs accountable for offending our sensibilities, something you clearly find to be “Inconceivable!”

    Sam (e8f1ad)

  55. Which is why I would never make such a suggestion. Why did you?
    Steve57 (e9e6e7)

    Because that is invariably how people who defend Islamists argue.

    They make a statement, get called on it, then variously change the subject, appeal to authority, deny legitimacy, attempt to create a moral equivalency, or make an even more outrageous claim.
    What they do not do is ever directly address the rebuttal or any initial points made against their position without one of the above techniques.

    Give them the least bit of leeway and a topic that starts with Islamist terrorism will wind up with the Spanish Inquisition, small pox blankets on the Great Plains, and the Great Depression as “proof” that you are wrong and suicide bombers don’t really exist (though are of course holy martyrs).

    Sam (e8f1ad)

  56. In Yugoslavia, it was as tied to ethnic as sectarian ties, the Croatian Catholics, which would become the Ustache after Radic’s death, the Serbian Orthodox and the Bosnian Moslems,

    narciso (ee1f88)

  57. “Because that is invariably how people who defend Islamists argue.”

    Sam – Well 1,400 year of inter-state conflict magically morphed into 14 years of Latin American history in the blink of an eye when the original point was merely Muslim on Muslim violence and not inter-state violence or a comparison to European violence which nobody had specifically or implicitly made. Mr. Deco’s goal posts have a liberal coating of WD-40.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  58. well the Dog Trainer doesn’t even come close to this type of insight:

    http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-islamic-state-world-leaders-20140915-story.html

    narciso (ee1f88)

  59. Just to note that the least affluent part of the globe would be Tropical Africa, which has no dominant religious dispensation.

    While not monolithic, I thought the prevailing religion was animism, sometimes mixed with Christianity, sometimes mixed with Islam.

    MD in Philly (f9371b)

  60. Mr. Deco’s goal posts have a liberal coating of WD-40.
    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

    Well, I can’t deny that the particularly talented apologists can combine multiple distractions into one “rebuttal”, particularly with the evidence right there in front of all of us.

    The thing is I could rebut most all of his distractions, particularly the ones where he stays focused on his attempted European and American comparisons, but I see no reason to reward him for his dissembling.
    (Though I will slip now and again and start to show off. But then I actually know this history, unlike an Islamist apologist, no matter how talented at digression and obfuscation.)

    Sam (e8f1ad)

  61. Art Deco should be christened “Art Devo”, as he’s proving on a daily basis that de-evolution is real.

    cube top… squared off… eight corners… ninety degree angles… flat-top… stares straight ahead… stock parts… BLOCKHEAD!

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  62. Re: religions in Africa:

    MD in Philly (f9371b) — 9/15/2014 @ 4:35 pm

    I thought the prevailing religion was animism, sometimes mixed with Christianity, sometimes mixed with Islam.

    I may not have this quite right, but as a first approximation, I think there’s a “Bantu line” to the south of which Bantu languages are spoken and to the north Semitic or somewhat Semitic languages – and the places with the Hamitic/Semitic or whatever name they have for the large language family now, Islam has a presence, although it is not all Islam, especially in Ethiopia, which for a few years even had the Spanish Inquisition there – I think 1625 to 1632 or so.

    Sammy Finkelman (e4c3a1)

  63. And get called on it, you follow it up with an even more ridiculous thing:

    You called me on nothing. That’s a precise description of the Ba’ath Party. That Saddam made use of Islamic tropes for ten years does not alter that. Ba’athism was a mid-20th century ideology of national mobilization, escalatingly revanchist in character. It owed nothing to Wahhabi interpretations. One of the two founders of the Ba’ath was Michel Aflaq, who is not Muslim at all.

    Actually it is as totally irrelevant to anything you’ve said, just as everything you’ve said has been totally irrelevant to the point you are attempting to rebut.

    No, it is not, unless you have some sort of esoteric thesis you’re not letting us in on.

    Art Deco (ee8de5)

  64. You mean a region that was subjected to centuries of Islamist slave raiding?

    Likely would not apply very deep in and, in any case, would not prevent the development of affluent societies in succeeding centuries. (Per capita income in the Anglophone Caribbean generally exceeds that of Tropical Africa by a factor of about 4, even though these were slave societies in origin).

    Art Deco (ee8de5)

  65. “I thought the prevailing religion was animism, sometimes mixed with Christianity, sometimes mixed with Islam.”

    True that.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  66. No, it is not, unless you have some sort of esoteric thesis you’re not letting us in on.

    You have that backwards:
    Your attempted obfuscations have no relevance unless in service to some esoteric thesis you are keeping to yourself.

    Likely would not apply very deep in . . .

    So then you have no idea just how much of Africa was affected by Islamist expansion and slavery.

    . . . and, in any case, would not prevent the development of affluent societies in succeeding centuries.

    And there you demonstrate you have no idea when it was ended.

    (Per capita income in the Anglophone Caribbean generally exceeds that of Tropical Africa by a factor of about 4, even though these were slave societies in origin).

    Except I didn’t say “slave societies”, I said “subjected to centuries of Islamist slave raiding”.
    And of course all of sub-tropical Africa is not within the Anglosphere.
    And the development of colonial Africa is distinctly different from the development of the post-slavery Caribbean.

    And so we see that the effects of the degraded Islamist culture does indeed have a negative effect even on their neighbors.

    Sam (e8f1ad)

  67. 64. And get called on it, you follow it up with an even more ridiculous thing:

    You called me on nothing. That’s a precise description of the Ba’ath Party. That Saddam made use of Islamic tropes for ten years does not alter that. Ba’athism was a mid-20th century ideology of national mobilization, escalatingly revanchist in character. It owed nothing to Wahhabi interpretations. One of the two founders of the Ba’ath was Michel Aflaq, who is not Muslim at all.

    Art Deco (ee8de5) — 9/15/2014 @ 6:28 pm

    In which Art Deco proves my point

    Dammit!. Baathism is what Art Deco says it is. Not what Saddam Hussein said it was.

    I have a hard time deciding which is less ridiculous. This, or a sub-par community organizer from Chicago with a Poli Sci degree from Columbia and a JD from Harvard lecturing us on how an Islamic State headed by a guy with a PhD in Islamic Theology from Baghdad University is so totally NOT Islamic.

    http://news.siteintelgroup.com/blog/index.php/entry/226-the-story-behind-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi

    Do you work for this administration, Art Deco? You seem to have the qualities they look for.

    Steve57 (e9e6e7)

  68. “You called me on nothing” = “I wasn’t specifically referring to ISIL” as the J.V. team (When asked in January about the group that just captured Fallujah [No other group but ISIS]) – “I didn’t have sex with that woman”

    Steve57 (e9e6e7)

  69. Dammit!. Baathism is what Art Deco says it is. Not what Saddam Hussein said it was.

    Actually Steve57, that is an example of Art Deco playing bait-and-switch obfuscation.

    Scrolling back, you never directly labeled Saddam Hussein as a Ba’athist. You just noted that he modified the Ba’athist flag while re-branding himself as a defender of Islam.
    Art Deco then insisted on parsing Hussein’s regime exclusively as Ba’athist, drawing you into trying to argue the definition of “Ba’athist”.

    “Technically”, he is correct about the definition of “Ba’athist”. It is a specific ideology with a specific meaning.
    Functionally, you are absolutely correct that Hussein modified his regime, with consequent effects that you note.

    The end result is an argument similar to whether Stalinism or Maoism is “true” Marxism/Communism, and whether National Socialism is properly classified as a “left-wing ideology” or not.
    Of course that completely distracts from the fact that it is irrelevant if Hussein was a “true” Ba’athist or not, and that the discussion is absolutely not about the fine points of categorizing Ba’athist off-shoots. (Which are of course National Socialist off-shoots, which mean they are Marxist off-shoots, which means we can add Husseinism to Stalinism in arguing endlessly about what still qualifies as Communism.)
    He wants to overwhelm the discussion with parsings of technicalities rather than actually address the issues.

    Unfortunately for him, I know the technique, I know the technicalities, and I’m not inclined to let him get away with it.

    Sam (e8f1ad)

  70. “Scrolling back, you never directly labeled Saddam Hussein as a Ba’athist. You just noted that he modified the Ba’athist flag while re-branding himself as a defender of Islam.
    Art Deco then insisted on parsing Hussein’s regime exclusively as Ba’athist, drawing you into trying to argue the definition of “Ba’athist”.”

    Sam – Funny thing, never mentioned by Art Deco is that Muslim on Muslim violence employed by Saddam and his Sunni henchmen to stay in power over the Shiite majority in Iraq.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  71. What!?!
    You mean he ignored the direct point being made in order to quibble over a technical definition?

    INCONCEIVABLE!

    No, wait . . . I mean:

    QED

    Sam (e8f1ad)

  72. 71. Sam – Funny thing, never mentioned by Art Deco is that Muslim on Muslim violence employed by Saddam and his Sunni henchmen to stay in power over the Shiite majority in Iraq.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 9/16/2014 @ 9:38 am

    One of the reasons I linked to a typical comment on a Muslim discussion board was to show that to many Sunnis Hussein’s violent repression of the Shiites is a point in his favor.

    …5 – He served as a thorn in the eyes of the Rafidah Shi’ites and helped prevent the spread of Shi’ism. So he stopped the expansion of the Rafidah revolution of Iran from spreading to Iraq and the Peninsula, as was the stated intention of the Khomeini gang.

    …7 – He helped unite the Sunni Muslims of Iraq and strengthened the call of Ahlus-Sunnah, creating an environment which would later nurture the call to Jihad and the Islamic state, whose foundations is one of Tawheed.

    8 – He invoked Islamic prayers and employed Islamic historical and religious themes, which ran contrary to the secular, kafir, Ba’athist ideology.

    …Add to this what occurred during his hanging, when the Rawafid executioners were taunting him with “Muqtada! Muqtada!”. So it was clear that the Shi’ites hated him since he stopped them from making Iraq into a Shi’ite state, which they have now accomplished with the aid of the Crusaders.

    …We ask Allah to accept his martyrdom, use his death to waken the virtuous Ahlus-Sunnah Muslims of Iraq, to awaken the wider Ummah to the conspiracies of the enemies of Islam, whether they be from the Zionists, Crusaders, or the Rafidah…

    People like Art Deco can insist Saddam Hussein was a secular fascist all they want. The fact is that Muslims in the ME largely view Saddam Hussein as a true Muslim and a Martyr. This may or may not have been the case before he died. It is certainly the case now. One of the reasons is that Hussien didn’t know his executioners were recording his death. Yet he said the Shahada as he was mounting the steps of the gallows. So to the significant portion of Muslims who were sympathetic to Hussein because of what he did during the last decade of his rule, millions more have come around to view Saddam Hussein favorably. And in retrospect, they also now believe he was a good Muslim after his apparent conversion following Desert Storm in 1991.

    These are the facts that are relevant to what we are dealing with in 2014. If anyone wants to relive the Carter era, feel free to argue the finer points of Baathism circa 1979.

    Steve57 (e9e6e7)

  73. Steve57 – Disputing the existence of Muslim on Muslim violence was what brought Art Deco to the thread. It is not a surprise he avoided discussing it.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  74. There are no ‘finer points’ of Baathism, it is a Fascist ideology borrowed from Mussolini and Hitler, and melded with Islam (and not the good parts – if any exist).

    askeptic (efcf22)

  75. Boy, we’re in for it now…..

    askeptic (efcf22)


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