Reply With QuoteQuickly... Let's drop white phosphorous on them. That usually solves the problem.
The political equivalent of Egypt's MB has form, as Michael Totten notes: (http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/b...lse-moderation)
Everyone should read Paul Berman's most recent essay in The New Republic about how Islamist radicals are using the supposed crime of “blasphemy” to terrorize people in the Middle East and beyond [link:
In it he mentions Rached Ghannouchi, the leader of Tunisia's “moderate” Islamist party Ennahda.
"By now everyone has noticed the fog of euphemism that has crept over the word “moderate” when applied to Islamist movements and leaders. A “moderate” is someone such as Rachid Ghannouchi, the Islamist leader in Tunisia, basking for the last few months in his October 2011 triumph at the polls—who has spoken at length over the years about “Jewish Masonic Zionist atheistic gangs” and the “Talmudic satanic project” to create a “new Jewish world order on the ruins of the American Western world order,” about the mothers of suicide terrorists as “a new model of woman,” and more generally about “the extinction of Israel” or, more recently and hygienically, “the germ of Israel,” which he has come to think will, like polio, shortly be eradicated. Ghannouchi is one of the leading champions around the world of Hamas—a leading champion because Hamas itself has never been well-endowed with intellectuals, but Ghannouchi is an educated philosopher. Then again, Ghannouchi promises to respect democratic norms within Tunisia itself. Measured by Islamist standards, he is indeed a “moderate.” No one but satanic Masonic Zionist germs need fear extermination, if Rachid Ghannouchi has his way. At least, not for the moment! Yet how can it be that Islamist standards have ended up accepted in the mainstream Western press, such that, for months now, barely a day goes by when we do not read encomia to the “moderation” of Rachid Ghannouchi?"
Since I'm still in Tunisia, Berman emailed me and asked if I thought he got Ghannouchi right or if he's overreacting. He is not overreacting. He got Ghannouchi right. The leader of Tunisia's Islamists really did say those things. Ghannouchi also says moderate things, but look: sophisticated extremists will sometimes lie in order to come across as more reasonable than they really are. Genuine moderates, on the other hand, have no reason to lie and pretend they're extremists when they are not.
Ghannouchi pretends to be moderate for two reasons. First, most Tunisians are moderates who are frightened by violent radical Islam. If Ghannouchi's party is to succeed, he can't go around telling people he wants their mothers, daughters, and sisters to strap on suicide vests.
He also has to stop talking like that if he doesn't want to be treated as a pariah by the civilized world.
I met a few Ennahda people in Tunis. They do come across as moderates compared with their counterparts in Egypt. They do this not because they want to, but because they have to. That's a good enough reason for guarded optimism, but let us not kid ourselves.
As Paul Berman writes on the MB (http://www.tnr.com/article/books/mag...ech?page=0,0):
MARSHALL AND SHEA devote very little attention to superstitions about the Jews, and this makes sense from a narrow point of view. A human-rights report should chronicle acts of persecution, and during the last several decades nearly the entire Jewish population of the Muslim world successfully fled to Israel and other places—which means that, unlike the oppressed Ismailis, Ahmadis, Baha’is, Muslim liberals, Christians, and other unhappy minorities, the Jews of the Middle East are right now capable of defending themselves con fuoco, even con troppo fuoco. The only substantial exception can be found in Iran, where a rump population of the ancient Jewish community has stubbornly remained in place. But Marshall and Shea report that Iran’s Jews, having declined to flee, also decline to raise even the tiniest of wan complaints about their circumstances, which may suggest a high degree of intimidation. There are twenty thousand of these people.
Seen from an angle broader than human rights persecution, though, the belief in supernatural Jewish evil might seem worthy of commentary. It is often supposed that, when the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt first acquired a mass popularity, beginning in 1936, its appeal rested on a nationalist loathing for the British. But the campaign that in fact attracted hundreds of thousands of Egyptians into the Brotherhood ranks was anti-Zionist, in solidarity with the Arab Uprising in Palestine—with Zionism defined in the more-than-human manner that could be understood by studying The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, just then taking their prominent place in the Islamist literature. That was ages ago. But does anyone really suppose that supernaturalist anti-Zionism has somehow receded more recently to the margins of the Islamist imagination?
I urge any of my more optimistic readers to look up the various YouTube videos of a sermon delivered by Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi in Tahrir Square, Cairo, in February 2011, to an enormous crowd. His sermon was one of the turning points of the Arab Spring—the moment at which the Muslim Brotherhood finally decided to ripple its muscles in front of a broad public. Qaradawi is the most widely known and admired Sunni cleric in the world, owing to his al-Jazeera televangelism, even apart from his status as the Brotherhood’s leading theologian. He devoted most of his sermon to celebrating the early moments of the new revolution. He urged the Egyptian people onward. But the sermon also rose to a climax that turned away from Egypt altogether in order to touch on Palestinian issues. He prayed to God to be allowed “to witness the conquest of the Al-Aqsa mosque,” in Jerusalem—though, in another translation, “conquest” is rendered as “opening.” His meaning was clear, either way.
Qaradawi is famous for having bestowed clerical blessings upon suicide terror and the policies of Hamas. He resembles Rachid Ghannouchi in this respect, his fellow member of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, except that Qaradawi is the senior figure. The jaunty title “mufti of martyrdom operations” is something Qaradawi assigned to himself, in a fit of televised ghoulish humor. The prayed-for “conquest” or “opening” of the Al-Aqsa mosque at the climax of his sermon at Tahrir Square could only mean the triumph of Hamas’s jihad. There are people who claim not to know what this would involve. But Qaradawi himself has offered a few hints. Hamas’s jihad means the completion of what Hitler, as the agent of God, long ago began—another element of Qaradawi’s thinking that, together with his overall condemnation of the peace process, he has announced to his gigantic television audience.
But what strikes me about Qaradawi’s Cairo sermon was the crowd’s reaction to those final, climactic invocations. The reaction was oceanic. On some of those videos a giant wave appears to lift up the vast city square. Here was the revolutionary emotion—not for every last Egyptian, to be sure, but evidently for a great many people who have just now voted for one or another of the Islamist parties. Here was the revolutionary goal, openly announced. It was not merely the overthrow of Pharaoh. It was the liberation of Jerusalem. The crowd at Tahrir Square erupted in emotion because huge numbers of people look upon Qaradawi’s goal as a transcendental aspiration—the jihad that is spiritual and material at the same time.
And yet Qaradawi, too, is typically described as a “moderate.” Even his Tahrir Square sermon has been described and applauded more than once as “moderate,” without the slightest reference to its concluding section. How can this be, almost seventy years after the defeat of Nazism—the presentation of such a person as a “moderate,” amid the discreet overlooking of his rantings on Jewish themes? The omissions tend to be systematic, too. The scholar Samuel Helfont has commented on this magazine’s website about a recent American scholarly biography of Qaradawi that likewise manages to overlook or underestimate the rantings. A similar distortion can be seen in historical scholarship on Qaradawi’s predecessor as grand theoretician, Sayyid Qutb. The most recent of the scholarly Qutb biographies duly takes up his theories about satanic Jewish conspiracies, but somehow the conspiracy theories merit only a handful of pages, which will scarcely seem appropriate to anyone who has actually read Qutb’s enormous Koranic commentaries, not to mention his pamphlet on the Jews. Martin Kramer has made the same point in regard to an Oxford University Press book about Ghannouchi. Silenced is the name of Marshall and Shea’s human-rights report, and Self-Silenced ought to be the title of a round-up analysis of some recent Western academic scholarship.
A further article on the MB by Eric Trager:
http://www.tnr.com/article/world/102...pring-election
Yet the Brotherhood came to Washington with an agenda of its own: selling itself as a “moderate” organization to a highly skeptical American public. And it did so using one of the oldest sales tricks: It completely misrepresented itself.
In a certain sense, the Muslim Brotherhood’s representatives had no other choice. If they admitted, for example, that they intend to repeal the law that criminalizes sexual harassment—as one of their female parliamentarians declared earlier last week—they would have killed their chances at winning over an American public that embraces gender equality. Similarly, if the Brotherhood’s representatives used their time in Washington to reiterate their leaders’ calls for banning beach tourism, it would have destroyed any hopes of an American taxpayer-aided bailout for the nearly bankrupt Egyptian economy. And if they’d repeated their leaders’ 9/11 conspiracy theories, they would have been on the first plane back to Cairo, rather than invited for meetings at the White House and State Department.
Thus, the Brotherhood presented a version of its politics very different from the one that would be familiar to Egyptians. For instance, when asked about the organization’s plan to sink Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel by putting it to a referendum—which multiple Brotherhood officials have called for quite publicly—Brotherhood-affiliated Freedom and Justice Party MP Abdel Mawgoud al-Dardery simply denied it. “No referendum at all concerning international obligations,” he told Ben Birnbaum of The Washington Times. “All our international agreements are respected by the Freedom and Justice Party, including Camp David.” Sondos Asem, editor of the English-language Brotherhood website Ikhwanweb, was only slightly less misleading. “We’ve reiterated our position towards both the treaty with Israel and all the treaties that have been signed by previous governments,” she said on CNN. “We are not willing to change any of these treaties unless if there is a massive popular will to change that.” Asem’s “unless” qualification seemingly went unnoticed, neatly buried under her pro-peace platitudes.
...
Of course, the Brotherhood’s representatives also used their time in America to deny their theocratic aims. “As our name indicates, we are the Freedom and Justice Party,” said Asem, the Brotherhood website editor, on CNN. “And what we would like to achieve in Egypt is actually a civil democratic state that is based on the rule of law.” But the Brotherhood’s presidential candidate, Khairat al-Shater, recently promised to give clerics a legislative role—an undemocratic structure if there ever was one.
Later, when pressed on the role of women at Georgetown by a liberal Egyptian activist, Asem said, “We are … working to improve the situation of women in society, getting to the root causes of the problem of the marginalization of women.” It remains unclear, though, how the Muslim Brotherhood’s longtime opposition to legislation banning female genital mutilation, which a Brotherhood parliamentarian recently reiterated, plays into the Brotherhood’s supposed concerns for women’s social role. And when CNN’s Brianna Keilar pressed al-Dardery on the Brotherhood’s clitorectomy stance, the parliamentarian suddenly got defensive. “The Egyptian people will decide for themselves what is good for them,” I overheard him telling Keilar. “It is not acceptable for anyone to tell the Egyptian people how to think this way or the other way.” Al-Dardery’s insistence on Egypt’s sovereign right to circumcise women was, perhaps, his most honest remark of the trip.
The Muslim Brotherood is the party that Press Secretary Jay Carney says the Administration will judge according to its "actions" rather than its "religion." I guess Jay Carney defines clitoral mutilation, rampant racism, sexual harassment, war on Israel and war on the United States as simply aspects of Islamic culture everyone has to respect in the name of multiculturalism. These apologists for totalitarians remind one of Jimmy Carter's period of playing nice with the Soviets, where Americans had magically overcome their (to use his own infamous words), "inordinate fear of Communism." Obama and Carter are of a piece. They are disgraces to the Western tradition.
As Carney put it:
Question: Can I ask you a question on the meeting with the Muslim Brotherhood that took place here? According to our sources, the parliamentarian of the Muslim Brotherhood met with Steve Simon and Samantha Power here...
Carney: Our policy is clear and is the same, which is that in the aftermath of Egypt’s revolution, we have broadened our engagement to include new and emerging political parties and actors — because it’s a fact that Egypt’s political landscape has changed and the actors have become more diverse, and our engagement reflects that. The point is that we will judge Egypt’s political actors by how they act, not by their religious affiliation.
Transcript here:http://gretawire.foxnewsinsider.com/...ng-gender-gap/
Samantha Power is the same fine woman who called on the United States to invade Israel to protect the Palestinians.
Last edited by Zevico; April 25, 2012 at 05:00.
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."--General Sir Charles James Napier
Quickly... Let's drop white phosphorous on them. That usually solves the problem.
"Ceterum censeo Ben esse expellendum."
Wow. Zevico posted a bunch of articles from right-wing sources twisting information to fit a right-wing agenda. What a surprise.
“As a lifelong member of the Columbia Business School community, I adhere to the principles of truth, integrity, and respect. I will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.”
"Capitalism ho!"
"Twisting" sure does sound ominous but it doesn't quite have the same effect as reposting all of the articles and then describing them all as lies, which you did earlier. Remember that the rules of evidence hold that the mere assertion of a proposition constitutes absolute evidence of its truth. This is as true in political debate as it is in a court of law. So, naturally, having asserted that these sources "twist" information* to "fit a right-wing agenda", you've proven it to be true.Originally Posted by DaShi
* Note how I changed "twisting" into "twist" to fit my right-wing agenda.
Last edited by Zevico; April 25, 2012 at 08:42.
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."--General Sir Charles James Napier
Tell me, Zevico. Should people be allowed to elect only parties that promise equal rights and continued development of the democratic process? What if people want to vote for someone who promises the dictatorship of the proletariat or the rule of sharia?
Graffiti in a public toilet
Do not require skill or wit
Among the **** we all are poets
Among the poets we are ****.
It gets really weird if you realize that these Salafi idiots are right wing...
"Ceterum censeo Ben esse expellendum."
Respectfully, your question is too vague. From what perspective are you asking this question?
Is it a question of foreign policy that presumes that I live in Australia, a democratic state, and am arguing about what foreign policy it or other Western countries should have vis-a-vis, say, Egypt, which has democratically elected a party calling for the rule of sharia? If so then my response is that we must treat that nation as an enemy once it is ruled by a totalitarian movement, because their vision for the world calls for an Islamic (or Communistic, as the case may be) imperialistic foreign policy.
Or is it a question of political morality, which a citizen of a country that is likely to elect a dictatorship of the proletariat or the rule of sharia must answer for him or herself? In that case, the answer depends on the political options open to that citizen. It is certainly true that free elections can lead to the direct or indirect election of totalitarians. It has happened in the past. It is further true that, for a private citizen, opposing them by legal means is a moral duty when they are out of power. If the state falls to totalitarians then revolt becomes a moral duty.
Last edited by Zevico; April 25, 2012 at 08:27.
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."--General Sir Charles James Napier
Are you saying that a segment of a population ruled / governed by a group of people they can't politically opose should revolt ?
"Ceterum censeo Ben esse expellendum."
Against a totalitarian dictatorship, or a totalitarian movement that is in power but has not yet destroyed civil institutions and society, yes. So a German citizen would be justified in doing so after Hitler became Chancellor, for example. Of course the practicality of open revolt is another matter. There's no point in being a martyr for a lost cause.
Of course Tunisia is not a totalitarian dictatorship yet. And, additionally it may still be practical and therefore defensible and necessary for a Tunisian citizen to work to bring non-Islamist parties together against the Islamists within the bounds of the law. But maybe not. As a student of foreign policy and not an expert, I would not go so far as to say that Tunisia is now inevitably going to become a totalitarian country, but it is an unfortunately strong likelihood in the face of a shambolic and disunited secular, liberal and leftist opposition.
The great tragedy though is that once you reach the stage of totalitarian dictatorship it is altogether too late to stage any kind of revolt or coup as the bulk of civil society will be quickly eliminated if they haven't been already.
Last edited by Zevico; April 25, 2012 at 08:40.
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."--General Sir Charles James Napier
regarding the first article. it never ceases to amaze me how, according to certain commentators, believe that whenever an islamic politician says something 'moderate' then they're playing to an audience and trying to fool us, yet when they say something inflammatory, it's an eloquent expression of their true feelings and certainly not playing politics or trying to appeal to a certain constituency.
i also object to your incorrect use of the word 'totalitarian'.
"The Christian way has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found to be hard and left untried" - GK Chesterton.
"The most obvious predicition about the future is that it will be mostly like the past" - Alain de Botton
Do they really have a moral right to revolt if the regime is supported by the majority?
Graffiti in a public toilet
Do not require skill or wit
Among the **** we all are poets
Among the poets we are ****.
Then obviously we shouldn't be clamoring for them to have a democracy.
If there is no sound in space, how come you can hear the lasers?
:(){ :|:& };:
Yes. If they're an oppressed minority, why should they sit down and be oppressed?
If there is no sound in space, how come you can hear the lasers?
:(){ :|:& };:
Zevico, do you think that Republicans can reasonably be perceived as moderates outside of the US?
"The boastful seeks the company of parasites." (Spinoza)
What does that have to do with the fact that all of these toppled Arab governments are being replaced by worse ones?
God only help us if Saudi Arabia ever becomes a democracy.
I come from the land of the ice and snow
From the rust belt where industry won't go
They are not being replaced by worse ones. Not one of them.
“As a lifelong member of the Columbia Business School community, I adhere to the principles of truth, integrity, and respect. I will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.”
"Capitalism ho!"
Well, maybe Iraq. But not by much.
“As a lifelong member of the Columbia Business School community, I adhere to the principles of truth, integrity, and respect. I will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.”
"Capitalism ho!"
bears repeating.
"The Christian way has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found to be hard and left untried" - GK Chesterton.
"The most obvious predicition about the future is that it will be mostly like the past" - Alain de Botton
Egypt is definitely worse off now than it was under Mubarak.
I come from the land of the ice and snow
From the rust belt where industry won't go
So a secular dictatorship is better than a religious democracy? Okay, an islamist democracy.
Graffiti in a public toilet
Do not require skill or wit
Among the **** we all are poets
Among the poets we are ****.
The rule of law, a free press and free speech, an independent judiciary and a vibrant civil society and public debate are essential to functional democracy. Elections that give rise to a majoritarian government are merely one aspect of democracy. An Islamist democracy is a contradiction in terms: Islamists oppose the free press and free speech as blasphemous, and the independence of the judiciary as contrary to the rule of sharia and clergy, and as a consequence in fact if not in theory, the rule of law. Tyranny follows from these elements of the Islamist ideology.
That Islamist ideology, incidentally, calls for eternal war against the United States and other Western countries. In fact the head of the Muslim Brotherhood explicitly stated that ""Resistance Is the Only Solution against the Zio-American Arrogance and Tyranny."
http://www.memri.org/report/en/print4650.htm
In short, the Egyptian government is soon to be run, to some extent, by a political movement devoted to holy war against the United States and the West. Under Mubarak this was not the case.
Last edited by Zevico; April 26, 2012 at 04:40.
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."--General Sir Charles James Napier
1. The question is phrased poorly. Consider the use of the word "reasonably". You're posing an objective test: "can a reasonably well-informed person perceive Republicans as moderates?"
2. But if you are posing an objective test then the location of the person is irrelevant.
3. Yet the trouble with an objective test is that it fails to account for the vast differences in culture and ideology throughout the world. How does a reasonably well informed Islamist, for instance, regard Republicans in the US? Much as he does Democrats: as aspects of the Great Satan. Is a reasonably well-informed person an Islamist, a classical liberal, a social democrat, a free marketeer, etc? See also e.g. http://alittlebitofjake.wordpress.co...s-a-p-herbert/
4. So, if you wish to rephrase your question, please do so. But do so in another thread as I don't see what this has to do with the topic at hand.
Last edited by Zevico; April 26, 2012 at 09:36.
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."--General Sir Charles James Napier
no it isn't. it was a state run by the military, and now it's a...err...state run by the military.
however now at least, there have been elections and the people have expressed their view about who they would like to govern them. there is also a chance now of real change and movement towards a more democratic society, or at least, a society closer to what the egyptian population aspires to.
"The Christian way has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found to be hard and left untried" - GK Chesterton.
"The most obvious predicition about the future is that it will be mostly like the past" - Alain de Botton
There is no a priori knowledge of politics, you buffoon.
And "reasonable" does not mean "objective".
"The boastful seeks the company of parasites." (Spinoza)
Yep, one of the downsides of promoting democracy around the globe. They get to choose how they want to be ruled, we don't.
We either respect it or we're hypocrites.
The OT at APOLYTON is like watching the Special Olympics. Certain people try so hard to debate despite their handicaps.
Baron O RIP.
Yes, that's exactly it. I would rather we leave them alone either way.
"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work...After eight years of this Administration, we have just as much unemployment as when we started... And an enormous debt to boot!" — Henry Morgenthau, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Treasury secretary, 1941.
Yep, maybe they wouldn't hate us so much then.
The OT at APOLYTON is like watching the Special Olympics. Certain people try so hard to debate despite their handicaps.
Baron O RIP.
Exactly, even the US had it bumps when it became a democracy, having ditched the Article of Confederation for the Constitution. In fact, the founding fathers realized that they still were not creating the perfect government and created it to be as malleable as necessary.
“As a lifelong member of the Columbia Business School community, I adhere to the principles of truth, integrity, and respect. I will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.”
"Capitalism ho!"
Short answer, yes.
I come from the land of the ice and snow
From the rust belt where industry won't go
A shame we're not getting Santorum.
“As a lifelong member of the Columbia Business School community, I adhere to the principles of truth, integrity, and respect. I will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.”
"Capitalism ho!"
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