ESR: Draft for an Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto

WE ARE MEMBERS OF A CIVILIZATION, and we hold that civilization to be worth defending. We have not sought war, but we will fight it to the end. We will fight for our civilization in our thoughts, in our words, and in our deeds.

WE HAVE AWAKENED. We have seen the face of evil in the acts of the Bin Ladens and Husseins and Arafats of the world; we have seen through the lies and self-delusions of the idiotarians who did so much both to make their evil possible before the fact and to deny and excuse it afterwards. We shall not flinch from our duty to confront that evil.

WE SHALL SHED the moral cowards and the appeasers and the apologists; and we shall fight the barbarians and fanatics, and we shall defeat them. We shall defeat them in war, crushing their dream of dominion; and we shall defeat them in peace, using our wealth and freedoms to seduce their women and children to civilized ways, and ultimately wiping their diseased and virulent culture from the face of the Earth.

I did post a comment (twice, actually beccause the comment server was so slow). It went something like this:

Hear him! Sign me up.

Since it's a draft, I do feel entitled to one quibble. I don't like the phrase "wiping their diseased and virulent culture from the face of the Earth". Let me suggest "wiping the diseased and virulent branches of their culture from the face of the Earth". This isn't about bigotry or genocide. It's about behavior modification.

Since I'm on a gardening metaphor roll, I guess this means that we need to be turning our swords into pruning hooks!  

5:07:09 PM  comment []    

Veiled4Allah: Double Standards

Certain people like to say that the media in Muslim countries, or prominent religious leaders in these countries, promote hatred of Judaism and Christianity. Don't they notice how often the media in the U.S., and prominent religious leaders (like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Franklin Graham, etc) promote hatred of Islam?

Some folks in this country hate Muslims, Jews, Catholics, Christians, Atheists, gays, the rich, the poor. Get in line, you want hate, we've got haters. But our haters, no matter how loudly they rant, do not speak for large portions of our population.

Since we are guaranteed freedom of speech and religion, there's no way to stop people from saying things we don't agree with.

When I attend church and synagogue, I don't hear messages of hate. I hear messages of tolerance and pleas for understanding. Pleas that we look at the big picture, to understand that the actions of a few radicals -- no matter how horrific -- should not color our views of the vast majority of their peace-loving co-religionists.

I suspect that most mosques in the US preach a similar message of tolerance.

Unfortunately this does not seem true in most of the Islamic world. The recurring feature Peaceful Religion Watch at LGF documents hundreds of pronouncements from imams, many broadcast on official TV and radio that denigrate Jews and Christians, to the point of denying their very humanity, as we see in this charming quote:

O God, free Al-Aqsa Mosque from the filthy and the grandchildren of monkeys and pigs.

These are people of the Book. Jews, Christians, and Muslims worship the same one, true God.

When Falwell steps into the pulpit or in front of a TV camera and stuffs his foot in his mouth or spews hateful venom, we hear denunciations on all sides. Americans roll their eyes and shake their heads.

I don't hear any similar denunciations from the Muslim world. Yes, I hear it from a few American Muslims, but even then their comments often have caveats along the lines of: "Well they wouldn't do it if it weren't for Israel...." Maybe I'm not listening or looking in the right places, but I don't hear unqualified denunciations of such venom anywhere. If it's there, please provide me with links. This deafening silence leads me to believe that most Muslims think such hateful statements reasonable. Again, if I'm wrong please show me why.

Certain people like to say that Muslims are evil because they (allegedly) want to kill non-Muslims. Don't they notice how much of the commentary in "war blogs" and even in some major media sources calls for nuking the Muslim world and the like?

I've seen a lot of non-alleged calls for the deaths of Jews and Christians. I've seen innumerable calls for Jihad against the infidel. I've seen warbloggers suggest nuking Mecca and Medina if Muslims use nukes against Israel or the west. In fact, I would be shocked if several leaders in the Muslim world haven't already been informed that those most holy sites will be vaporized if they use nukes or other WMDs. We call this deterrence. It's ugly. It makes us feel bad about ourselves. It works. Deterrence saved the world from nuclear war. I'm not sure we would follow through on the threat, but the threat's existence means that it's less likely that the provocation would occur. I don't hear people calling for us to nuke Baghdad, Riyadh, Damascus, or Teheran. We don't go around killing people for the fun of it. We leave that to Saddam et al.

I do not in any way condone the wrongdoing of Muslims, but I am getting sick to death of seeing people condemn Islam or Muslims for the exact same behavior that they themselves are indulging in. Does their hatred blind them to their own hypocrisy? Or isn't anybody supposed to notice the similarities?

Let's be clear here. We're not talking about Muslim and Christian clerics calling for the same things. Jerry Falwell -- bless hard heart and tiny brain -- referred to Mohammed as a "terrorist". You find this insulting. I find it insulting. But understand that he's not calling Muslims pigs and monkeys -- subhumans who are an affront to God and who deserve to die. He's not offering 72 virgins in heaven to those who would sacrifice their lives to murder innocents.

I don't hate Muslims as people. I don't want any Muslim to die as a matter of principle or religious faith. I have come to hate your institutions. I have come to hate the rulers of Arab countries. I have come to hate the Arab educational system that teaches hate and glorifies death. I have come to hate . And even so, I would choose to leave the Arab world alone. I would prefer not to make trouble, to live and let live. But the seeds the Arab world's leadership has planted have taken root, flowered, and borne fetid, poisonous fruit.

I don't like to hate. Hate is bad for the soul. Hate taps into tremendous, evil energies. Hate is alluring, powerful, self-sustaining, and ultimately completely destructive. Want to wear a veil? Fine. Used to be I would see a veiled woman on the street and smile inwardly, marvelling at the many faiths of this great country I'm blessed to live in, and also at the myriad ways of connecting ourselves with divinity. I still have those feelings, but I also cringe at a symbol of oppression and hatred. What a difference 13+ months makes. I prefer the old me. I understand the new me. I want the old me back.

Pray to Allah SWT for vision and insight. Pray for wisdom and courage.

Pray for vision and insight to see yourselves and your faith for what it has become. The tree has rotten branches. Everything decays eventually. This is not the fault of infidels. We don't want to keep you down. We don't want to oppress you. Our existence is not an affront. We want to sell you Xboxes, Coca-Cola, and software. We want to buy things from you other than oil.

Pray for wisdom and courage to understand what you see and have the courage to make changes. Prune the rotten branches. It will make the tree of Islam -- of the Arab world -- stronger.

Hate eats away at the soul. It clouds the eye and deafens the ear. Hate poisons the tongue hardens the heart. Hate works both ways, as hate of others increases, so does hatred of self increase.

If God needed blind followers, why aren't we all perfectly obedient to divine will? The Fall in Genesis was not a calamity. It was a felix culpa, a happy sin. A wonderful new invention: knowledge of good and evil, curiosity. God gave everyone brains. Let's all use them.

I believe we're here on this Earth to do hard, good things. God does not want us to kill each other. That's too easy. God wants us to help each other, to learn from each other, to lift each other up. God does not want us to hate each other. Hating too is easy. God wants knowledge, understanding, and love. Not hate. God does not want us to blindly submit. God gave us brains for a reason. God wants us to explore, to increase our comprehension of the incomprehensible universe we inhabit. If God wanted prayers, they'd be answered. God wants us to hear us report back our findings, not to mouth long-since-meaningless platitudes.

In Hebrew, the word "Israel" means "wrestles with God". What a remarkable image. After all, what do we do in our lives, but wrestle with that which we don't understand, that which we can't control, that which we don't like. Some bits we learn to understand, some we learn to control, and some we change. And sometimes we fall short and in falling short we get a glimpse of how unimaginably complex

No one can tell me that Einstein didn't understand the nature of God more clearly and more honestly than Mullah Omar. Einstein saw into the very workings of matter. He caught glimpses of how everything -- EVERYTHING -- works. He stood on the shoulders of giants and thus his stature grew greater than that of his predecessors. Mullah Omar did everything in his power to pull everyone down. To make everything less than it was: dirtier, coarser, baser, meaner, uglier. If heaven and hell exist, I know who went where.

We humans are bitterly flawed. No one can deny that. Our best religions turn us from our dazzling, destructive fascination with and tendency towards cruelty, control, and murder. Our worst religions push us towards that abyss.

Muslims, Christians, Jews: wear your chadors, burqas, crosses, kipot, yarmulkes, turbans, and talit. But not as signs of submission to God's control. Wear them as reminders of your struggle to understand God's universe, the world we inhabit, and your task that you and I and every soul since Adam and Eve have been given: to make it a better place.   

2:36:18 PM  comment []