This was Jeff’s submission for “Everyone Draw Muhammad” Day. He’s a dead man.
Long, LONG-time commenter Jeff H., himself a cartoonist, weighs in in the controversy discussed in the previous post, regarding efforts to exonerate radical Islam from any responsibility for the terrorist attack against a French satire publication.
In answer to his final question, I would respond: “It’s true, that’s all.” And yes, I think it’s clear that Muslims are more likely to engage in violent terrorism than other faiths, at least at this time.
Here is Jeff’s Comment of the Day on the post “Of The Good Muslim, Paris, “1984”, And The Compulsion To Deny The Truth”:
Here are my thoughts on it: if you think it would avail you any to talk to one of the men who perpetrated this act and say, “It’s OK! You’re not really Muslim!”, then you can go ahead and say they’re not Muslims.
If you ARE a Muslim who notices the hypocrisy in someone claiming to be a Muslim carrying out an act of terror in defiance of parts of the Koran, I wouldn’t have a problem with them saying he’s not a Muslim.
I saw someone call them “pretend Muslims,” and I sort of like that term, but that sort of implies that they don’t believe in the faith itself, and that’s not really for anyone to say. But if we’re calling them pretend Muslims because they don’t adhere to the parts of the Koran that would mitigate violence, they could call everyone else pretend Muslims for not participating in violence. Or, those who have intercourse before they’re married and trim the edges of their beards could be called “pretend Christians.” Let’s see how far that goes.
I really hate to hand it right to the jerks who will use this against the vast majority of peace-loving Muslims, but trying to deny it just kicks the can down the street. Pretending not only that it has nothing to do with it, but that it doesn’t even exist, ends up having the equal and opposite reaction on the other side that insists all Muslims secretly crave violent revolution.
What is especially bothersome is when people are like, “well, they’re Muslims, what do you expect?” I hate to cry ‘racist,’ but… that is totally racist. It is racist to assume that Muslims are not expected to control their anger, or that they cannot help themselves because of their ethnic background. This is why I was furious when I heard people hoping the perpetrators of the Boston bombing would turn out to be white.
Congratulations, you wretched tin-eared pinheads. You got your wish. The Tsarnaevs were white. They were Caucasian MUSLIMS from Chechnya. I hope that makes some kind of difference to you.
But just because jerks will use this to blame all Muslims (which is deeply regrettable), that doesn’t mean the response is to pretend Muslims are incapable of violence. That’s just carrying water for the next person of any belief who wants to do something unspeakable to their next critic.
What I want to see is a statistical analysis of acts of violence like this, the alleged beliefs of the perpetrator, and see if any group of beliefs makes someone more likely to do something like this. The goal is not to attempt to smother any belief except the belief that your opinion gives you the right to hurt someone else.
Yes, those who perpetrated this attack identified themselves as Muslim. Now the question is: “So what?”
Ethics Alarms 
“Muslims’s aren’t violent”
“What about the Paris attack?”
“No REAL Muslims are violent.”
Time to update “No true Scotsman” to “No true Muslim”??
Well, they’re Muslims, what do you expect? I say that not because I believe that individual Muslims are, by and large, likely to be violent, but because the cult itself primes its zealots for this sort of thing. It’s been said that not all Muslims are terrorists, but just about all terrorists are Muslims. This is an inescapable fact that has its roots in the structure of the religion, coupled with their culture and their antagonistic relationship with the world around them since their inception. Comparisons to Christianity and Judaism hold no water at all. Islam is much more than a religion; it’s a complete, unyielding system of philosophy, politics, ethics, and “logic” that bears no real resemblance to the other faiths. The philosophy is simple: Allah is all, worshiping him is all, and the highest aspiration a Muslim can have is to die for him in Jihad. The relationship between the moon god (Allah was actually one of several gods worshipped during Mohammed’s time) and Muslims is that of master and slave, with the slave ever fearful of the whip of the master (there are hundreds of references to fear in the Qu’oran, more on that later). The epistemology of Islam is the word of Mohammed, period. This is also the absolute limit of its logic. It goes like this: “this is the word of God, and if you don’t believe it, I will insult, harangue, and beat you until you submit. If this fails, I will kill you, or maybe I’ll just tax you to death if I’m feeling especially magnanimous. Contradictions? That just means I have more options. How do I know the Qu’oran is true? Because it contains the words of Allah. How do I know this? Mohammed said so. How do I know that Mohammed is Allah’s messenger, and not just some bipolar, schizophrenic,homicidal, pedophiling lunatic? Mohammed said that the angel Gabriel said that Allah said so”. They also believe that the Qu’oran is the verbatim word of God, and not just paraphrasing, parables, and the occasional direct quote like in the Bible. The aforementioned contradictions don’t weaken this claim in the least, because God says that it’s the later suras that reflect his present state of mind. That doesn’t mean that the earlier ones are false, though; it just means that the later ones are stronger. Their ethics are pretty simple too; you are either a fully-human Muslim, or you are a sub-human Kafir (non-believer). If you are a Kafir, then any violence, deceit, or subjugation committed against you is perfectly acceptable. The political system of Islam, considered to be absolutely perfect, is based entirely on the Qu’oran, and it is destined to rule the entire planet. Islam requires all Muslims to support this, either by proselytizing, fighting, or financing the fighting. This is the broader meaning of Jihad, and it is dogmatically central. Another thing that bears mentioning is that there is no such thing as the sort of filial love that Christ taught in the Qu’oran. There are hundreds of references to fear of Allah, there are very few to love. Of these, most are negative references (against money, power, other gods), three about Allah commanding all to love him, 2 about his love of Muslims, a couple dozen about his hate of Kafirs, and 3 oblique references to loving other Muslims. The only one that comes close to universal love is about giving what you love to a Muslim charity. It neglects this seemingly important feature of any normal person’s concept of a good religion, but it is chock-full of Allah repeating over and over again the absolute infallibility of his messenger, and the terrible consequences of not yielding to his every whim. Anyway, I have no problem giving Muslim individuals the benefit of a doubt, but I absolutely reject any claim that these “non-Muslims” are acting contrary to the Qu’oran. I judge the faith itself on its tenets and its fruits, and by that metric, it is clearly one that stands out as a very real threat to our way of life.
Sorry about my sentence structure and syntax. I’ve got so little time these days, and whenever I try to hammer out a lengthly post at speed, it looks like this. Being a scientist, it’s been too long since I’ve had to write papers, and I’m way out of practice.
No, I believe you’re wrong. Islam is no more unyielding or negative than any other faith. I know many many Muslims, including good few who are immigrants from Muslim-dominated countries, and they do not hold the beliefs that you claim are so core to Islam. What has happened here is that the West have destroyed countries that just so happen to be Muslim, and in scrabbling for some kind of identity or security, certain Muslims turn to extremism.
When a country becomes really poor, extreme beliefs gain popularity. Case and point, Nazi Germany. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out a trend in every country that the USA and the UK have fucked over.
That’s a factor, of course. But that’s part of the explanation for radical Islam’s growth, not a rebuttal of the fact that Islamic beliefs are supporting an epidemic of terrorism. “It’s their fault” isn’t an excuse, and it’s seldom a complete explanation. That applied to Nazi Germany too.
Yup… the Charlie Hebdo shooting was definitely the fault of the USA and the UK. It is ALWAYS the fault of everyone EXCEPT those who did it and directly enabled it.
“Islam is no more unyielding or negative than any other faith.” Oh dear. Please tell me you’re having a laugh at our expense. If not, please thoroughly read the Qu’oran and Hadith.
I know Muslims too, including a couple of whom I have a lot of affection for. Doesn’t change the fact that Islam is an insane death cult.
Keep in mind that a Muslim can misrepresent their beliefs for the purpose of disarming a Kafir. The two forms of this are called Taqiyya and Kitman. I forgot the differences between the two. This is not to say that all Muslims are liars and jihadists. The point that I’m making is that their faith commands them to be.
Does Islam condone vigilantism?
Definitely against non-believers. It gets a little murkier with fellow Muslims. I’ll dive back into the Qu’ran and see what I find.
Look, Mohammed went into a cave and got the “word” from an angel…no witnesses, no backup. Three times. Same lack of witnesses. Joseph Smith got a book of the “word” from an angel. Book was in a language unknown to men. A bunch of farmers with no linguist skills translated the book, which is now missing. When’s the last time you’ve been shot at by a Mormon?
Joseph Smith Akbar !!
Great comment…. I concur with the comment of the day nomination. I just will quibble with one point: Islam is a religion not a race. Prejudging people for their religion is not racism, it is religious bigotry.
“….Or, those who have intercourse before they’re married and trim the edges of their beards could be called “pretend Christians.” Let’s see how far that goes.”
Agreed with most of the comment, but have to flag this. Bzzzzt, no, wrong.
Sorry if this is tangential, but there is nothing in Christian doctrine about how to shave or not shave one’s beard. Jeff is referring to Leviticus 19:27, which is part of the Old Testament Torah, which is a series of hundreds of moral and civil laws setting up a theocracy in a specific geographic place called Israel, intended to be temporary according to Christian theology. Jeremiah 31:31:
“Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt…”
See, Christians have this thing called the “New Testament” which means “New Covenant.” You can also call it “Christianity.” It means that in Christian doctrine, the Mosaic Covenant fulfilled its purpose and ended 2000 years ago, and that laws about shaving beards, stoning adulterers, how to punish people who let their cattle run wild, etc., stopped being relevant at that time because God’s kingdom was no longer a physical nation requiring civil laws.
I could turn this into a Bible study with a dozen more passages, but it’s really not complicated…unless you’re President Obama, or Oprah, or Ellen, or Dan Savage, or the clown who wrote “A Year of Living Biblically” or any number of illiterates who say things like, “I don’t see you Christians stoning adulterers like the Bible says you should…”
Jeff’s reference to sex before marriage works, and would have been enough to make his point.
Sorry bout the tangent.
Not tangential. Absolutely necessary when the dishonest arguments are drummed out to say “Christians are just as bad as Muslims”.
to be more specific, there are general commandments and specific commandments. Lev. 18:22 was a general commandment, while Lev,. 20:13 was specific to the rulers of Israel.
It would seem to me that the analogous passages in the Quran were directed, not to believers in general, but specifically to Islamic states.
(This does beg the question of why there are far more Muslims than Jews willing to engage in religious vigilantism.)
That brings up another point. Muslims always quote the early parts of the Qu’oran, which is where you’ll find the more gentle and reasonable suras, when (mis)representing their religion to Westerners. These were written when Mohammed was in Mecca, futilely trying to win hearts and minds peacefully.The later suras, written when Mohammed started getting pissed and impatient, are actually the suras that are more relevant to Muslims, due to the convention of following the later ones. These were written when he marched on Messina, leaving thousands of dead in his wake. H e found that murder and terror were much more effective recruitment tools, going from 150 converts, to bringing the entire Arab world into the fold. Whenever Mohammed wanted to reinvent Islam, he went into the cave an voila, a new religion that got more violent, pedophilic, goat-raping, wife-stoning, fatwa-issuing, and war-mongering with every conference with the angel Gabriel. People need to quit listening to Muslim scholars and their friends, and read the damned thing for themselves. Be patient with the redundancy (like the telling of the story of Moses 39 times, I shit you not), and work around the fact that it’s arranged in order of longest to shortest suras. Also read the Sira and Hadith. Mohammed was one sick, twisted little monkey.
Well said, and I retract that particular comment. though I wish then those Christians would not use the other passages in Leviticus to condemn homosexuality. (I believe there’s a segment in Romans that also says that, but hell if I remember the actual passage.)
One of the issues when having discussions about the Muslim Faith is that there isn’t a central power structure. There isn’t a Muslim Pope ruling on current events. Instead, you have this… diaspora of imams who say violently contradictory things, and all of those things have just as much weight at the point of being said as any other imam, because they all have legitimacy. The Christian parallel I’d like to point out are the Westboro Baptists. Yes, they say things that are generally abhorrent, but they lack the legitimacy of say… The Catholic Church, and so their ability to do harm is mitigated by the culture we live in.
The question then is what makes a “real” Muslim? Dedication to their holy book? Book are tools, you can interpret them to justify almost anything. Whether you like what they do or not? How very liberal of you, but no. Perhaps it’s once a point of view collects enough adherents. After all, majority rules, right? Perhaps.
What’s the percentage before certain views become “Generally Accepted Muslim Principles” (GAMPs)? 10% 25%, 33%, 50%? When you have so many conflicting views, 10% can be a minority majority, Canada has elected Prime Ministers with less than 30% of the popular vote. At some point though, picking a percentage brings some pretty shitty statistics into the light.
For instance, a recent Gallup Poll revealed that 17% of the population of France “Sympathised with ISIS” and that could be further broken down to 40% of people identifying as young, male and Muslim. Ben Shapiro relatively recently released a video taking percentages from polls and compiling them to show that globally, up to 680 million Muslims held one of three views that he took to be ‘radical’, Politifact took that claim up and butchered his math and rated him mostly false, (I tended to agree with Ben on this one, his methodology was at least available.) but they still came up with math that showed about 180 million Muslims that held radical views.
So even with soft, lefty math, 180 million of the 1.7 billion Muslims globally have radical views, and by (in my opinion) marginally better math, 680 million of the 1.7 billion Muslims hold radical views. That means radical Islamist views are held by somewhere between 11% and 40% of all Muslims.
At what point do we say: “No… Those Muslims are absolutely real Muslims. And we have an issue?”
Don’t forget the fact that Muslims can misrepresent their faith to make it seem more palatable and innocuous to us sub-humans. They even have a name for it; Kitman. It’s encouraged.
Are you sure that isn’t Taqiyyah? Or Taqqiyah or however that moon man language spells it?
Pretty sure it’sd not, but I could be wrong. I’ll check.
According to Wikipedia the two go hand in hand.
Kitman is the science of deception and concealing one’s opinions while notionally supporting a different view.
Taqiyyah is the specific permission or dispensation given to Muslims to apply that practice to hide their religious views to avoid persecution.
“Kitman is the science of deception and concealing one’s opinions while notionally supporting a different view.”
I must be part Muslim. Otherwise I never would have gotten married.