From Magic City Morning Star
Michael Devolin
Christopher Hitchens: Secularist Fundamentalist
By Michael Devolin
I used to enjoy Christopher Hitchens and his articles critical of Islam. I assumed at the time he could discern the difference between the barbarities of Islam-barbarities no different in this 21st century than they were in the 7th century-and the benignant tenets of Judaism and how these same tenets have proven to be as beneficial to mankind today as they were before, during, and after the Hellenic age. To equate the long ago defiant independence movement of the Maccabee Jews and their adherence to the nationalist aspirations of Judaism with the expansionist and anti-Jewish ideologies of both Christianity and Islam is to blame the Jews for the genocide of Adolph Hitler's Holocaust and the bloodlust and violence of Osama bin Laden's jihadist terrorism. What Hitchens fails to mention in Bah Hanukkah is that the Maccabean revolt was not the only nationalist movement the history of that era records for us. There were also the provinces of Bactria, Parthia, and Cappadocia who asserted their independence. There were more than the Jews of Israel (not "Palestine") with whom the idea of being conquered and subsequently ruled by foreign invaders who demanded taxes and taught philosophy and religion at the point of the sword did not sit well. I guess this historical fact, the brutality of the Greek army, was lost on Hitchens, or maybe he intentionally avoided mentioning it. Primo Levi wrote, "An extreme case of the distortion of a committed guilty act is found in its suppression."
According to Christopher Hitchens, history has forgiven rulers such as Alexander the Great of rampaging about the world imposing by force upon conquered peoples the adoption of Hellenist philosophy and religious sentiment and, as happened in the land of Israel at the time, not only the prohibition of Judaism but also the worship of the G-D of Israel as defined in Judaism. Miserable secularist that he is, Hitchens fails to mention also that the Greeks demanded the Jews worship their gods, a decree antithetical to the tenets of Judaism. His praise of Hellenism's "secularism and philosophy" is not only a contradiction of the fact that Hellenism was all about the polytheistic worship of a pantheon of Greek gods, but also, laughably, this imposture conflicts with his personal and many published aggrandizements of secularism. The angry stupidity of Christopher Hitchens proves the veracity of the proverb, "Zeal without reflection is dangerous."
Our poor historian then excoriates the Maccabean dynasty for becoming "exorbitantly corrupt, vicious, and divided." Just like the Islamic fundamentalists whom Hitchens so often accuses of malice, he now imitates their propagandists by obfuscating the harsh and dissentious realities endured by the Jewish people in Israel (not "Palestine") during the Greek and Roman occupations. He fails to mention that these same Greek and Roman "saviours" and their respective god-cultures were responsible for the politically and religiously motivated murder of Jews by hundreds and thousands. From this point on I will refer to Hitchens' mendacious zeal as "secularist fundamentalism". I think the show fits.
Maybe, like his easily distracted countryman David Irving, Hitchens is attempting to rewrite history. Perhaps he doesn't take Jewish history seriously enough to recount it in real context and with the respect it deserves. Perhaps he could learn much from those Jews who today dutifully remember to each other those few glorious days in ancient Israel (not "Palestine") when the brave Maccabees made it known to Antiochus in no uncertain terms that his murdering thousands of observant Jews would never interrupt their obedience to the numinous intransigence of the laws of their Torah. The Maccabees are not the thugs in the story of Hanukkah, regardless Mr. Hitchens' sciolistic interpretation of their story.
Lastly, I haven't read anywhere that observant Jews disbelieve the world is "made up of atoms." On the contrary, if I remember correctly, there have been a few Orthodox Jewish physicists awarded the Nobel Prize for their work in this field of science. As for Hitchens' "intellectual renegade who prefers Athens to Jerusalem," I'm reminded of a summation of Plato and Aristotle written by Blaise Pascal, a very religious Roman Catholic and a physicist: "when they diverted themselves with writing their Laws and Politics, they did it as an amusement. That part of their life was the least philosophic and the least serious; the most philosophic was to live simply and quietly. If they wrote on politics, it was laying down rules for a lunatic asylum; and if they presented the appearance of speaking of a great matter, it was because they knew that the madmen, to whom they spoke, thought they were kings and emperors. They entered into their principles in order to make their madness as little harmful as possible." Now if only the irreligious Christopher Hitchens would consider the harm and the hurt caused by his insensitive and abrasive language. No-0ne is forcing him to light a candle, although it sounds to me like Mr. Hitchens is by far the loudest at "bitching about the darkness."
Written by Michael Devolin© Copyright 2002-2007 by Magic City Morning Star
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Islam Is Not an Island
From Magic City Morning Star
Michael DevolinIslam Is Not an Island
By Michael Devolin
Immediately I read in the National Post about a young Muslim girl being strangled by her Muslim father, I anticipated the usual laboured efforts of Islam's apologists and Canada's many obtuse multiculturalists to exculpate the religion of Islam and instead blame it all on bad old human nature. Although Ms. Parvez's was strangled because she refused to wear the Muslim hijab, although the alleged perpetrators of this crime were both Muslim, although this dress code is a part of Pakistan's Muslim culture, Shahina Siddiqui, of the Islamic Social Services Association, promises a horrified Canada that this homicide is "the result of domestic violence, a problem that cuts across Canadian society and is blind to colour or creed."
It should be obvious to all ordinary Canadians that Shahina Siddiqui is deliberately obfuscating the historical fact that Islam's religious violence has nothing to do with colour and everything to do with Islam's impetuous creed. This is the same religion whose Sudanese followers demanded hundreds of lashes and even the sentence of death for a British non-Muslim teacher who happened to name a teddy bear "Mohammed." For the life of me, I cannot fathom why naming a teddy bear, a lifeless toy, Mohammed is offensive, but naming so many of Islam's sons Mohammed, some of whom actually behave as though their terrorist acts speak with as much authority as the Prophet himself, is not. Personally, I'd be more discomposed by the irreparable damage these frenzied religious have already done to Islam's reputation than the innocuous and motherly behaviour of a dedicated and loving British teacher toward Muslim children. It should be (and probably is) obvious to all ordinary Canadians that a Muslim father strangling his Muslim daughter for refusing to wear the Muslim hijab in public is most certainly the result of the Muslim culture taught him in the Muslim country from where he emigrated.
Jasmine Zine, a sociology professor at Wilfred Laurier University, has determined that "Muslim girls in Canada are struggling to reconcile Muslim traditions with more secular Western behaviour." Apparently Prof. Zine summates that, compared to Muslims, the behaviour of Western Jews and Christians is "more secular" simply by virtue of their appearance. Obviously, Jews and Christians need to behead a few innocent aid workers in Iraq, or maybe explode themselves in the midst of a few hundred Russian school children in Beslan to be acknowledged as "religious" instead of the wishy-washy "secular". Prof. Zine's estimation is simply another example of Western academia's many blundered attempts to portray the very violent behaviour of so many religious Muslims as no different from the good behaviour of so many religious Jews and Christians. In the case of Ms. Parvez, Prof. Zine makes great effort to equate the regressively brutal cultures of Islam with the tolerant and progressive cultures of Christianity and Judaism. As for "competing cultural demands," it appears to me that the only competing culture is Islam's, and the only demands being made are Islam's.
Prof. Zine laments that Muslim girls "dress in one manner at home and another at school." This has been-in an entirely different context, mind you-the practice of Islam's terrorists too. This was the point I made at the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission in regards to those Muslims employed by McMaster University who emigrated from Muslim countries where the veridical efficacy of the religion of Islam has produced cultures of violence and anti-Jewish/anti-Western hatred. I do not believe for a moment that such hatreds are extirpated immediately these Muslim immigrants depart their respective Islamic country of origin for the Western world's democracies. As Mark Steyn wrote, "Islam is a religion and an explicitly political one-unlike the birthplace of your grandfather, it's not something you leave behind in the old country. Indeed, for many of its adherents in the West, it becomes their principle expression-a pan-Islamic identity that transcends borders."
Barbara Kay titled a recent article, 'How Canada let Aqsa down.' I totally disagree. Islam let Aqsa Parvez down. And Islam gets away with this let down simply because Western journalists and Western academia have not the courage to point out the fact that whenever these brutal cultural anomalies are exposed in Western societies, the religion of Islam is, in every case, a part of the ugly picture. Our mistake is that we continually and injudiciously blame our human nature as a means of exculpating the religion of Islam.
John Donne wrote, "No man is an island, entire of itself." Well, hey, the same applies to the religion of Islam. Islam is not an island separate from those zealots who act out its malefic ideology. It was not domestic violence that robbed Aqsa Parvez of her life; it was the religion of Islam. It is the religion of Islam that threatens Canada and Canadians, not the terrorists who act out its tenets. Until Islam is properly and honestly identified by the Canadian justice system as the insalubrious ideology spurring animals like Mohammed Parvez to murder his own daughter, we cannot expect a cessation or abating of such familial brutality within our borders. Moreover, if the religion of Islam ever arrogates to its litigious zealots a majority vote in Canada's future elections, whether provincial or federal, we can expect far worse.
"Don't think there are no crocodiles because the water is calm." -Malaysian proverb© Copyright 2002-2007 by Magic City Morning Star
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Democracy Without Islam
Democracy Without Islam
By Michael Devolin
Sep 12, 2007 - 8:31:16 PM
In her book Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes, "Shouldn't the places where Allah was worshipped and His laws obeyed have been at peace and wealthy, and the unbelievers' countries ignorant, poor, and at war." This is a point of truth Islam's apologists will not touch with a ten foot pole. Of course, in their feverish imposture and denigration of the West, of Israel and her Jews, these apologists haven't scheduled for such bulldozing knowledge. They have failed to comprehend that the West's foreseeable rejection of Islam is not only a consequence of Islam's predictable terrorism and violence, but also our instinctual habit of preservation: We have by now noticed that the average Muslim is not integrating into our culture but only insofar as is necessary for him to exploit the compassionate infrastructures that welcome him into our reasonable world. We have by now become anxious about the intelligible possibility that our beloved Western freedoms and religious liberties will soon be transmogrified and extirpated by Islam's malefic, exponential and insular presence within our borders.
Samuel P. Huntington posits to his trembling students that, "The decline of the West is still in the slow first phase, but at some point it might speed up dramatically." Well, aside from a burning desire to tell Mr. Huntington that he can kiss my Irish-Canadian ass, I am also keen to inform him that the West is not finished. Not yet. Not by a long shot. Western intelligence agencies are well aware of Islam's bludgeoning of our "system" and our accommodative culture. Many of Islam's proponents, whether terrorists or apologists (is there a difference?) are well aware of our cognizance of their exploitation and hatred of our non-Islamic democracy and its Judeo-Christian social appendages, such as "Welfare" and "Immigration". They simply believe (but for entirely different reasons) as Samuel P. Huntington and all his lemming-minded, broken-hearted friends believe-- that the West is on a journey into extinction.
In his provocative book America Alone, Mark Steyn warns the West that our contest with Islam is merely a matter of demographics. He rightly warns that Muslim families are reproducing at higher percentages than non-Muslim families. Oriana Fallaci's controversial statement that Muslims "breed like rats" is, as one would expect from such a brave soul, based on statistical truth. It is by now evident to all who have been following the blood trail of Mohammedanism that this religion and its adherents have envisioned for themselves (whether non-Muslims like it or not) a world ruled by a caliphal Islam.
Democracy is not palatable to Islam's angry clerics unless of course it is a democracy actualized by a majority Muslim electorate. Ajai Sahni related to this pernicious strategy when he wrote of the Muslim populations of Junagadh and Hyderbad, that they believed "they have a natural constituency." Daniel Pipes' high-flying accolades for the "democracy" now being fabricated by the pro-Islamic voters in Turkey is yet another of his sciolistic and ludicrously odd constructs of a democracy that will never exist save in the mind of sycophantic fools like himself. Simply put, a democracy created by a Muslim electorate-as exampled by Hamas' election victory in Gaza-is not a democracy at all but rather the end of democracy and the beginning of a terrorist state. As Huntington so rightly put it, "In Islam, Caesar is God."
Written by Michael Devolin© Copyright 2002-2007 by Magic City Morning Star
By Michael Devolin
Sep 12, 2007 - 8:31:16 PM
In her book Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes, "Shouldn't the places where Allah was worshipped and His laws obeyed have been at peace and wealthy, and the unbelievers' countries ignorant, poor, and at war." This is a point of truth Islam's apologists will not touch with a ten foot pole. Of course, in their feverish imposture and denigration of the West, of Israel and her Jews, these apologists haven't scheduled for such bulldozing knowledge. They have failed to comprehend that the West's foreseeable rejection of Islam is not only a consequence of Islam's predictable terrorism and violence, but also our instinctual habit of preservation: We have by now noticed that the average Muslim is not integrating into our culture but only insofar as is necessary for him to exploit the compassionate infrastructures that welcome him into our reasonable world. We have by now become anxious about the intelligible possibility that our beloved Western freedoms and religious liberties will soon be transmogrified and extirpated by Islam's malefic, exponential and insular presence within our borders.
Samuel P. Huntington posits to his trembling students that, "The decline of the West is still in the slow first phase, but at some point it might speed up dramatically." Well, aside from a burning desire to tell Mr. Huntington that he can kiss my Irish-Canadian ass, I am also keen to inform him that the West is not finished. Not yet. Not by a long shot. Western intelligence agencies are well aware of Islam's bludgeoning of our "system" and our accommodative culture. Many of Islam's proponents, whether terrorists or apologists (is there a difference?) are well aware of our cognizance of their exploitation and hatred of our non-Islamic democracy and its Judeo-Christian social appendages, such as "Welfare" and "Immigration". They simply believe (but for entirely different reasons) as Samuel P. Huntington and all his lemming-minded, broken-hearted friends believe-- that the West is on a journey into extinction.
In his provocative book America Alone, Mark Steyn warns the West that our contest with Islam is merely a matter of demographics. He rightly warns that Muslim families are reproducing at higher percentages than non-Muslim families. Oriana Fallaci's controversial statement that Muslims "breed like rats" is, as one would expect from such a brave soul, based on statistical truth. It is by now evident to all who have been following the blood trail of Mohammedanism that this religion and its adherents have envisioned for themselves (whether non-Muslims like it or not) a world ruled by a caliphal Islam.
Democracy is not palatable to Islam's angry clerics unless of course it is a democracy actualized by a majority Muslim electorate. Ajai Sahni related to this pernicious strategy when he wrote of the Muslim populations of Junagadh and Hyderbad, that they believed "they have a natural constituency." Daniel Pipes' high-flying accolades for the "democracy" now being fabricated by the pro-Islamic voters in Turkey is yet another of his sciolistic and ludicrously odd constructs of a democracy that will never exist save in the mind of sycophantic fools like himself. Simply put, a democracy created by a Muslim electorate-as exampled by Hamas' election victory in Gaza-is not a democracy at all but rather the end of democracy and the beginning of a terrorist state. As Huntington so rightly put it, "In Islam, Caesar is God."
Written by Michael Devolin© Copyright 2002-2007 by Magic City Morning Star
Islam in Profile
Islam in Profile
By Michael Devolin
Jun 29, 2007
I've never understood the meaning of the term 'profiling' in the negative context as bandied about by the politically correct, especially when this same politically correct crowd is defending the millions upon millions of supersensitive Muslims of this world from those of us who, driven by conscience, voice publicly our concerns about the self-evident patterns of violence constantly associated with the religion of Islam.
I was recently accused of "racial and religious stereotyping" by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission after I presented to them in writing my concerns about Muslims hailing from certain playful Islamic androcracies in the Middle East being given access to McMaster University's Nuclear Reactor located in Hamilton, Ontario. Even worse, in the employ of the CNSC some of these Muslims have been given the responsibility of security at the site of McMaster’s nuclear reactor. My anxieties concerning these placements were, sadly for all Canadians, deemed by CNSC to be irrelevant and irrational.
Apparently the violent and racist profile Islam's very own zealots have for centuries been inadvertently conjuring up for the non-Muslims of this world to delineate goes unnoticed by those of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission whose responsibility it should be, in a post 9/11 world, to evaluate. Have they not noticed, as recounted by Edward N. Luttwak (Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington), the "Muslim-Hindu violence in Kashmir, Muslim-Christian violence in Indonesia and the Philippines, Muslim-Buddhist violence in Thailand, Muslim-animist violence in Sudan, Muslim-Igbo violence in Nigeria, Muslim-Muscovite violence in Chechnya, or the different varieties of inter-Muslim violence between traditionalists and Islamists, and between Sunnis and Shiites"? Luttwak's observations are not in any sense "racial and religious profiling" but rather a picture of veridical Islam - the real Islam. Anyone see a pattern here? I know I do.
In one day in one newspaper I read about the Sword of Islam being bestowed upon Osama bin Laden by Muslim clerics of the Pakistan Ulema Council, death threats (fatwas) issued and angry protests on the streets of cities around the world in reaction to Salman Rushdie being knighted by England's Queen, Hamas and Fatah gunmen of Gaza killing each other (and anyone who happens to be in the line of fire), suicide bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan. The list just keeps growing. No one is profiling Islam more than Muslims themselves. And I'm committing "religious profiling" because I'm discomposed about the fact that adherents of Islam, who emigrated from countries where all this hell-raising is taking place, are working on McMaster University's nuclear reactor? My fear is unjustified? I think not.
The ever prescient Christopher Hitchens of Vanity Fair, writing in defence of Salman Rushdie’s character and distinguished writing career, points out that "our media regularly make the assumption that the book burners and fanatics really do represent the majority, and that assumption has by no means been tested. (If it is ever tested, and it turns out to be true, then can we hear a bit less about how one of the world's largest religions mustn’t be confused with its lunatic fringe?). As I've written in other articles, one can properly judge a religion, not by its exceptional personalities, but only by how that same religion manifests itself within the masses of those who adhere to its tenets. In this sense, in my opinion, Islam has failed mankind and has proven to be a lethally insalubrious religious ideology. Such a threatening reality corroborates the veracity of the Yiddish proverb, "A crooked light casts a crooked shadow."
Indeed. This media assumption noted by Mr. Hitchens I happened to convey to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. But to no avail. Their measure of my fear of Islam and Muslims being conterminous to a nuclear reactor in my country - in my neck of the woods! - is that "allegations based on religion or race, without any supporting evidence in connection to issues, have not and will not be taken into account by the Commission in its consideration of any matter before it." And with that the CNSC granted McMaster University a licence to operate a nuclear reactor on its campus for another seven years. And so with utter exasperation I now ask those members of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, How much evidence do you need?
Written by Michael Devolin© Copyright 2002-2007 by Magic City Morning Star
I was recently accused of "racial and religious stereotyping" by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission after I presented to them in writing my concerns about Muslims hailing from certain playful Islamic androcracies in the Middle East being given access to McMaster University's Nuclear Reactor located in Hamilton, Ontario. Even worse, in the employ of the CNSC some of these Muslims have been given the responsibility of security at the site of McMaster’s nuclear reactor. My anxieties concerning these placements were, sadly for all Canadians, deemed by CNSC to be irrelevant and irrational.
Apparently the violent and racist profile Islam's very own zealots have for centuries been inadvertently conjuring up for the non-Muslims of this world to delineate goes unnoticed by those of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission whose responsibility it should be, in a post 9/11 world, to evaluate. Have they not noticed, as recounted by Edward N. Luttwak (Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington), the "Muslim-Hindu violence in Kashmir, Muslim-Christian violence in Indonesia and the Philippines, Muslim-Buddhist violence in Thailand, Muslim-animist violence in Sudan, Muslim-Igbo violence in Nigeria, Muslim-Muscovite violence in Chechnya, or the different varieties of inter-Muslim violence between traditionalists and Islamists, and between Sunnis and Shiites"? Luttwak's observations are not in any sense "racial and religious profiling" but rather a picture of veridical Islam - the real Islam. Anyone see a pattern here? I know I do.
In one day in one newspaper I read about the Sword of Islam being bestowed upon Osama bin Laden by Muslim clerics of the Pakistan Ulema Council, death threats (fatwas) issued and angry protests on the streets of cities around the world in reaction to Salman Rushdie being knighted by England's Queen, Hamas and Fatah gunmen of Gaza killing each other (and anyone who happens to be in the line of fire), suicide bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan. The list just keeps growing. No one is profiling Islam more than Muslims themselves. And I'm committing "religious profiling" because I'm discomposed about the fact that adherents of Islam, who emigrated from countries where all this hell-raising is taking place, are working on McMaster University's nuclear reactor? My fear is unjustified? I think not.
The ever prescient Christopher Hitchens of Vanity Fair, writing in defence of Salman Rushdie’s character and distinguished writing career, points out that "our media regularly make the assumption that the book burners and fanatics really do represent the majority, and that assumption has by no means been tested. (If it is ever tested, and it turns out to be true, then can we hear a bit less about how one of the world's largest religions mustn’t be confused with its lunatic fringe?). As I've written in other articles, one can properly judge a religion, not by its exceptional personalities, but only by how that same religion manifests itself within the masses of those who adhere to its tenets. In this sense, in my opinion, Islam has failed mankind and has proven to be a lethally insalubrious religious ideology. Such a threatening reality corroborates the veracity of the Yiddish proverb, "A crooked light casts a crooked shadow."
Indeed. This media assumption noted by Mr. Hitchens I happened to convey to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. But to no avail. Their measure of my fear of Islam and Muslims being conterminous to a nuclear reactor in my country - in my neck of the woods! - is that "allegations based on religion or race, without any supporting evidence in connection to issues, have not and will not be taken into account by the Commission in its consideration of any matter before it." And with that the CNSC granted McMaster University a licence to operate a nuclear reactor on its campus for another seven years. And so with utter exasperation I now ask those members of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, How much evidence do you need?
Written by Michael Devolin© Copyright 2002-2007 by Magic City Morning Star
Islam in Profile
Islam in Profile
By Michael Devolin
Jun 29, 2007
I've never understood the meaning of the term 'profiling' in the negative context as bandied about by the politically correct, especially when this same politically correct crowd is defending the millions upon millions of supersensitive Muslims of this world from those of us who, driven by conscience, voice publicly our concerns about the self-evident patterns of violence constantly associated with the religion of Islam.
I was recently accused of "racial and religious stereotyping" by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission after I presented to them in writing my concerns about Muslims hailing from certain playful Islamic androcracies in the Middle East being given access to McMaster University's Nuclear Reactor located in Hamilton, Ontario. Even worse, in the employ of the CNSC some of these Muslims have been given the responsibility of security at the site of McMaster’s nuclear reactor. My anxieties concerning these placements were, sadly for all Canadians, deemed by CNSC to be irrelevant and irrational.
Apparently the violent and racist profile Islam's very own zealots have for centuries been inadvertently conjuring up for the non-Muslims of this world to delineate goes unnoticed by those of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission whose responsibility it should be, in a post 9/11 world, to evaluate. Have they not noticed, as recounted by Edward N. Luttwak (Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington), the "Muslim-Hindu violence in Kashmir, Muslim-Christian violence in Indonesia and the Philippines, Muslim-Buddhist violence in Thailand, Muslim-animist violence in Sudan, Muslim-Igbo violence in Nigeria, Muslim-Muscovite violence in Chechnya, or the different varieties of inter-Muslim violence between traditionalists and Islamists, and between Sunnis and Shiites"? Luttwak's observations are not in any sense "racial and religious profiling" but rather a picture of veridical Islam - the real Islam. Anyone see a pattern here? I know I do.
In one day in one newspaper I read about the Sword of Islam being bestowed upon Osama bin Laden by Muslim clerics of the Pakistan Ulema Council, death threats (fatwas) issued and angry protests on the streets of cities around the world in reaction to Salman Rushdie being knighted by England's Queen, Hamas and Fatah gunmen of Gaza killing each other (and anyone who happens to be in the line of fire), suicide bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan. The list just keeps growing. No one is profiling Islam more than Muslims themselves. And I'm committing "religious profiling" because I'm discomposed about the fact that adherents of Islam, who emigrated from countries where all this hell-raising is taking place, are working on McMaster University's nuclear reactor? My fear is unjustified? I think not.
The ever prescient Christopher Hitchens of Vanity Fair, writing in defence of Salman Rushdie’s character and distinguished writing career, points out that "our media regularly make the assumption that the book burners and fanatics really do represent the majority, and that assumption has by no means been tested. (If it is ever tested, and it turns out to be true, then can we hear a bit less about how one of the world's largest religions mustn’t be confused with its lunatic fringe?). As I've written in other articles, one can properly judge a religion, not by its exceptional personalities, but only by how that same religion manifests itself within the masses of those who adhere to its tenets. In this sense, in my opinion, Islam has failed mankind and has proven to be a lethally insalubrious religious ideology. Such a threatening reality corroborates the veracity of the Yiddish proverb, "A crooked light casts a crooked shadow."
Indeed. This media assumption noted by Mr. Hitchens I happened to convey to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. But to no avail. Their measure of my fear of Islam and Muslims being conterminous to a nuclear reactor in my country - in my neck of the woods! - is that "allegations based on religion or race, without any supporting evidence in connection to issues, have not and will not be taken into account by the Commission in its consideration of any matter before it." And with that the CNSC granted McMaster University a licence to operate a nuclear reactor on its campus for another seven years. And so with utter exasperation I now ask those members of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, How much evidence do you need?
Written by Michael Devolin© Copyright 2002-2007 by Magic City Morning Star
By Michael Devolin
Jun 29, 2007
I've never understood the meaning of the term 'profiling' in the negative context as bandied about by the politically correct, especially when this same politically correct crowd is defending the millions upon millions of supersensitive Muslims of this world from those of us who, driven by conscience, voice publicly our concerns about the self-evident patterns of violence constantly associated with the religion of Islam.
I was recently accused of "racial and religious stereotyping" by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission after I presented to them in writing my concerns about Muslims hailing from certain playful Islamic androcracies in the Middle East being given access to McMaster University's Nuclear Reactor located in Hamilton, Ontario. Even worse, in the employ of the CNSC some of these Muslims have been given the responsibility of security at the site of McMaster’s nuclear reactor. My anxieties concerning these placements were, sadly for all Canadians, deemed by CNSC to be irrelevant and irrational.
Apparently the violent and racist profile Islam's very own zealots have for centuries been inadvertently conjuring up for the non-Muslims of this world to delineate goes unnoticed by those of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission whose responsibility it should be, in a post 9/11 world, to evaluate. Have they not noticed, as recounted by Edward N. Luttwak (Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington), the "Muslim-Hindu violence in Kashmir, Muslim-Christian violence in Indonesia and the Philippines, Muslim-Buddhist violence in Thailand, Muslim-animist violence in Sudan, Muslim-Igbo violence in Nigeria, Muslim-Muscovite violence in Chechnya, or the different varieties of inter-Muslim violence between traditionalists and Islamists, and between Sunnis and Shiites"? Luttwak's observations are not in any sense "racial and religious profiling" but rather a picture of veridical Islam - the real Islam. Anyone see a pattern here? I know I do.
In one day in one newspaper I read about the Sword of Islam being bestowed upon Osama bin Laden by Muslim clerics of the Pakistan Ulema Council, death threats (fatwas) issued and angry protests on the streets of cities around the world in reaction to Salman Rushdie being knighted by England's Queen, Hamas and Fatah gunmen of Gaza killing each other (and anyone who happens to be in the line of fire), suicide bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan. The list just keeps growing. No one is profiling Islam more than Muslims themselves. And I'm committing "religious profiling" because I'm discomposed about the fact that adherents of Islam, who emigrated from countries where all this hell-raising is taking place, are working on McMaster University's nuclear reactor? My fear is unjustified? I think not.
The ever prescient Christopher Hitchens of Vanity Fair, writing in defence of Salman Rushdie’s character and distinguished writing career, points out that "our media regularly make the assumption that the book burners and fanatics really do represent the majority, and that assumption has by no means been tested. (If it is ever tested, and it turns out to be true, then can we hear a bit less about how one of the world's largest religions mustn’t be confused with its lunatic fringe?). As I've written in other articles, one can properly judge a religion, not by its exceptional personalities, but only by how that same religion manifests itself within the masses of those who adhere to its tenets. In this sense, in my opinion, Islam has failed mankind and has proven to be a lethally insalubrious religious ideology. Such a threatening reality corroborates the veracity of the Yiddish proverb, "A crooked light casts a crooked shadow."
Indeed. This media assumption noted by Mr. Hitchens I happened to convey to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. But to no avail. Their measure of my fear of Islam and Muslims being conterminous to a nuclear reactor in my country - in my neck of the woods! - is that "allegations based on religion or race, without any supporting evidence in connection to issues, have not and will not be taken into account by the Commission in its consideration of any matter before it." And with that the CNSC granted McMaster University a licence to operate a nuclear reactor on its campus for another seven years. And so with utter exasperation I now ask those members of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, How much evidence do you need?
Written by Michael Devolin© Copyright 2002-2007 by Magic City Morning Star
Crazy Aunt in the Attic
Crazy Aunt in the Attic
By Michael Devolin
Sep 28, 2007 - 1:27:01 AM
There is only one Chosen People. No matter all of Islam's violence and threats and slanders, no matter all of Christianity's calumnious sophistry and laboured theologies, the Jews remain the Chosen People of G-D as defined in their Torah. And isn't this the point of contention between the Jews and all other human invention? Isn't this the one eternal truth Islam and Christianity have never been able to endure? The respective and violent histories of these two religions and their shameless mistreatment of the Jewish people merely confirm the veracity of the proverb, "Who can withstand envy?"
In defining Christianity and its theological relationship to Judaism, James Carroll writes, "The idea is that the Jesus movement, as it evolved into the Church, effectively replaced the Jews as the chosen people of God. Replacement became the motif, even in trivial way..." James Carroll, for all his posturing as a Christian who feels remorse and "contrition" about the Holocaust, fails to take the only conscionable course of action open to him after confessing to the sins committed by his fellow religious during that immeasurably horrific calamity: he fails to repudiate Christianity outright. Such a false humility and imposture is succinctly described by William Blake's pithy rhyme: "A truth that's told with bad intent—beats all the lies you can invent."
All political and military assaults on the State of Israel and the Jewish people by non-Jewish personages and nations I view as an attack on the veracity of the "choseness" of the Jewish people. Such a small nation existing precariously in the middle of such an enormous ocean of anti-Jewish hatred is the only reason powerful politicians like George Bush and Condoleeza Rice can so unctuously propel an intimidated and embattled Israeli government toward ousting entire communities of Jews from their homes and into what their G-D must surely view as an exile of immense contradiction - within the borders of the very Israel He gave to the Jews as their inheritance. Such callous disregard for Jewish national sensibilities on the part of the Bush Administration is nothing short of an attempt to controvert the validity of the Jewish Torah and the exclusivity with which it charters the Jewish people as "a light unto the nations."
If any man believe in the G-D of the Jews, as defined in their Torah, Who only is the Creator of the Universe - a belief that excludes, in my view, Allah and Jesus - then that same man would surely regard as grave imprudence any attempt to extirpate Jewish ownership of Israel or to calumniate the morality of Israel's defence against Islam's terrorists and the genocide they surely intend against all Jewish life within and without the borders of Israel. To disbelieve in the exclusivity of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people, in the last analysis, is to oppose the very G-D Who designated it as such. Likewise, to excoriate Israel's military and its defence of her Jews against the violent manifestations of Islam's madmen is therefore tantamount to wishing those same Jews dead.
Some men choose to believe in Jesus and Rome, some in Allah and Mecca, but every Jew is born into the Mosaic requirement of being faithful to the G-D of the Torah and the numinous intransigence of its laws, one of which is to inhabit the land of Israel. Consequently, our world is imposed upon by Christianity and the Apostle Paul's negative and sophistic concepts of the "spiritual Jew" and the "new Israel; by Islam and Mohammed's viciously simplistic libels against Judaism and the Jew. Both religious constructs, Christianity and Islam, were conceived as calumny against the Judaism of their day and the morality that same Judaism intimated as salubrious for the Gentile world. It's no wonder then that there exists a Yiddish proverb which declares, "A half-truth is a whole lie." And contrary to James Carroll's imperious denials, anti-Judaism is definitely a form of anti-Jewish hatred.
The religious refutations both Christianity and Islam have served to precipitate against the validity of the Jews as G-D's Chosen People are, to be quite frank, uncomfortably similar to the brazenness of Holocaust denial. That these refutations, at once ugly and angry and strained, are putatively accepted by most of the Gentile world reminds me of Deborah Lipstadt's depiction of modern historians insouciantly admitting into their ranks a David Irving as "the crazy aunt the family sequesters in the attic. Everyone knows she is there, but if you don't shine a light on her, she can be ignored." Likewise many of us are cognizant of the unexposed side of Christianity and Islam, regardless the glossing over these religions inspire from their attendant sycophants and apologists. But at the same time we know for a fact that the Jews were divinely identified in their Torah as the Chosen People of G-D - long before Christianity and even longer before Islam. We choose to muffle this knowledge in order to accommodate centuries-old religious traditions, a course of action which, in the case of Islam, shall be to our peril. This denial of the truth, this our refusal to accept that the Jews and only the Jews are the Chosen People of G-D, is the crazy aunt the Gentile world has for millennia sequestered in the attic. We cannot ignore her any longer.
Written by Michael Devolin © Copyright 2002-2007 by Magic City Morning Star
By Michael Devolin
Sep 28, 2007 - 1:27:01 AM
There is only one Chosen People. No matter all of Islam's violence and threats and slanders, no matter all of Christianity's calumnious sophistry and laboured theologies, the Jews remain the Chosen People of G-D as defined in their Torah. And isn't this the point of contention between the Jews and all other human invention? Isn't this the one eternal truth Islam and Christianity have never been able to endure? The respective and violent histories of these two religions and their shameless mistreatment of the Jewish people merely confirm the veracity of the proverb, "Who can withstand envy?"
In defining Christianity and its theological relationship to Judaism, James Carroll writes, "The idea is that the Jesus movement, as it evolved into the Church, effectively replaced the Jews as the chosen people of God. Replacement became the motif, even in trivial way..." James Carroll, for all his posturing as a Christian who feels remorse and "contrition" about the Holocaust, fails to take the only conscionable course of action open to him after confessing to the sins committed by his fellow religious during that immeasurably horrific calamity: he fails to repudiate Christianity outright. Such a false humility and imposture is succinctly described by William Blake's pithy rhyme: "A truth that's told with bad intent—beats all the lies you can invent."
All political and military assaults on the State of Israel and the Jewish people by non-Jewish personages and nations I view as an attack on the veracity of the "choseness" of the Jewish people. Such a small nation existing precariously in the middle of such an enormous ocean of anti-Jewish hatred is the only reason powerful politicians like George Bush and Condoleeza Rice can so unctuously propel an intimidated and embattled Israeli government toward ousting entire communities of Jews from their homes and into what their G-D must surely view as an exile of immense contradiction - within the borders of the very Israel He gave to the Jews as their inheritance. Such callous disregard for Jewish national sensibilities on the part of the Bush Administration is nothing short of an attempt to controvert the validity of the Jewish Torah and the exclusivity with which it charters the Jewish people as "a light unto the nations."
If any man believe in the G-D of the Jews, as defined in their Torah, Who only is the Creator of the Universe - a belief that excludes, in my view, Allah and Jesus - then that same man would surely regard as grave imprudence any attempt to extirpate Jewish ownership of Israel or to calumniate the morality of Israel's defence against Islam's terrorists and the genocide they surely intend against all Jewish life within and without the borders of Israel. To disbelieve in the exclusivity of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people, in the last analysis, is to oppose the very G-D Who designated it as such. Likewise, to excoriate Israel's military and its defence of her Jews against the violent manifestations of Islam's madmen is therefore tantamount to wishing those same Jews dead.
Some men choose to believe in Jesus and Rome, some in Allah and Mecca, but every Jew is born into the Mosaic requirement of being faithful to the G-D of the Torah and the numinous intransigence of its laws, one of which is to inhabit the land of Israel. Consequently, our world is imposed upon by Christianity and the Apostle Paul's negative and sophistic concepts of the "spiritual Jew" and the "new Israel; by Islam and Mohammed's viciously simplistic libels against Judaism and the Jew. Both religious constructs, Christianity and Islam, were conceived as calumny against the Judaism of their day and the morality that same Judaism intimated as salubrious for the Gentile world. It's no wonder then that there exists a Yiddish proverb which declares, "A half-truth is a whole lie." And contrary to James Carroll's imperious denials, anti-Judaism is definitely a form of anti-Jewish hatred.
The religious refutations both Christianity and Islam have served to precipitate against the validity of the Jews as G-D's Chosen People are, to be quite frank, uncomfortably similar to the brazenness of Holocaust denial. That these refutations, at once ugly and angry and strained, are putatively accepted by most of the Gentile world reminds me of Deborah Lipstadt's depiction of modern historians insouciantly admitting into their ranks a David Irving as "the crazy aunt the family sequesters in the attic. Everyone knows she is there, but if you don't shine a light on her, she can be ignored." Likewise many of us are cognizant of the unexposed side of Christianity and Islam, regardless the glossing over these religions inspire from their attendant sycophants and apologists. But at the same time we know for a fact that the Jews were divinely identified in their Torah as the Chosen People of G-D - long before Christianity and even longer before Islam. We choose to muffle this knowledge in order to accommodate centuries-old religious traditions, a course of action which, in the case of Islam, shall be to our peril. This denial of the truth, this our refusal to accept that the Jews and only the Jews are the Chosen People of G-D, is the crazy aunt the Gentile world has for millennia sequestered in the attic. We cannot ignore her any longer.
Written by Michael Devolin © Copyright 2002-2007 by Magic City Morning Star
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Christiane Amanpour: An Accomplice to Lies
From Magic City Morning Star
Michael DevolinChristiane Amanpour: An Accomplice to LiesBy Michael DevolinAug 23, 2007 - 6:28:08 AM
As a rebuttal to those who questioned her professionalism after witnessing her emotional outbursts during her coverage of the siege of Sarajevo, Christiane Amanpour replied, "There are some situations one cannot be neutral about, because when you are neutral you are an accomplice." Apparently Christiane Amanpour feels less emotional and more neutral about Jews and their religious connection to Israel than she does for the Muslims of Sarajevo.In her latest documentary, God's Warriors, Amanpour vilifies Jews simply by equating religious Jews with religious Muslims. Of course, not everyone will see it this way. Not everyone these days is willing (or brave enough) to critique Islam and its adherents, both for the violence and anti-Jewish hatred this religion and its attendant culture advocates, and the advocates of this religion and its culture, for how they are all too willing to accommodate such violence and anti-Jewish hatred. Obviously, the journalist Amanpour is not brave enough. An Oriana Fallaci she is not.Anyone who has studied the history of Islam will know that Jews and Judaism do not deserve to be in any way compared as imitations of Muslims and their Islam. Anyone as knowledgeable as Christiane Amanpour should be, who makes such a comparison in her documentary God's Warriors, can do so only wilfully, with laboured effort and with malefic intent. A religious Jewish friend, a directing member of the right-wing B'nai Elim intoned to me after watching the film, "I fear that she has awakened more sleeping anti-Semites and empowered the rest of the Jew-haters in the world. The attacks on Jews and Jewish establishments will no doubt increase as a result."I'm sure CNN is so very proud of Amanpour's anti-Israel, anti-Judaism diatribe. Of course, her "moral equivalency" is standard for CNN and their self-aggrandizing, cowardly journalists. Heaven forbid they should point out that Jews do not blow themselves up in German and Austrian restaurants for the sins of the Holocaust and the Crusades. Heaven forbid they should reveal, as did Ayaan Hirsi Ali in her book Infidel, that "Violent jihad is a historical constant in Islam." Heaven forbid they should expose the fact that Muslim zealots in the 21st century behead journalists and aid-workers simply because those journalists and aid-workers are Christians and Jews and therefore do not measure up to the Prophet Mohammed and the glory of the Koran. CNN and their effete journalists like Christiane Amanpour (all her war correspondence notwithstanding) are incapable of making such veridical contradistinctions simply because they have long ago made the obsequious choice to feed the masses with palatable slander, even though the masses, as history has so often exposed, often howl for anti-Jewish slander.In Sarajevo, at the height of her fame, Amanpour boasted to the world, "Objectivity doesn't mean treating all sides equally." Apparently this axiom does not apply when one of those sides are the Jews and the State of Israel. The warped logic of her documentary purports that Jewish terrorists are numerous, as active, and as determined to destroy the "goyim" (non-Jew) as are the Muslim terrorists to destroy not only Israel and her Jews, but also the entire Western world. This is one time when I'm sure the Jewish people would insist on being regarded as not equal to Muslims and their sequent, religiously inspired terrorism, not because such equivalence is so unattractive and out of character for Jews, but simply because it's an outrageous lie. Christiane Amanpour, as a result of her evident disdain for objectivity, is now become an accomplice to that lie.Written by Michael Devolin © Copyright 2002-2007 by Magic City Morning Star
Michael DevolinChristiane Amanpour: An Accomplice to LiesBy Michael DevolinAug 23, 2007 - 6:28:08 AM
As a rebuttal to those who questioned her professionalism after witnessing her emotional outbursts during her coverage of the siege of Sarajevo, Christiane Amanpour replied, "There are some situations one cannot be neutral about, because when you are neutral you are an accomplice." Apparently Christiane Amanpour feels less emotional and more neutral about Jews and their religious connection to Israel than she does for the Muslims of Sarajevo.In her latest documentary, God's Warriors, Amanpour vilifies Jews simply by equating religious Jews with religious Muslims. Of course, not everyone will see it this way. Not everyone these days is willing (or brave enough) to critique Islam and its adherents, both for the violence and anti-Jewish hatred this religion and its attendant culture advocates, and the advocates of this religion and its culture, for how they are all too willing to accommodate such violence and anti-Jewish hatred. Obviously, the journalist Amanpour is not brave enough. An Oriana Fallaci she is not.Anyone who has studied the history of Islam will know that Jews and Judaism do not deserve to be in any way compared as imitations of Muslims and their Islam. Anyone as knowledgeable as Christiane Amanpour should be, who makes such a comparison in her documentary God's Warriors, can do so only wilfully, with laboured effort and with malefic intent. A religious Jewish friend, a directing member of the right-wing B'nai Elim intoned to me after watching the film, "I fear that she has awakened more sleeping anti-Semites and empowered the rest of the Jew-haters in the world. The attacks on Jews and Jewish establishments will no doubt increase as a result."I'm sure CNN is so very proud of Amanpour's anti-Israel, anti-Judaism diatribe. Of course, her "moral equivalency" is standard for CNN and their self-aggrandizing, cowardly journalists. Heaven forbid they should point out that Jews do not blow themselves up in German and Austrian restaurants for the sins of the Holocaust and the Crusades. Heaven forbid they should reveal, as did Ayaan Hirsi Ali in her book Infidel, that "Violent jihad is a historical constant in Islam." Heaven forbid they should expose the fact that Muslim zealots in the 21st century behead journalists and aid-workers simply because those journalists and aid-workers are Christians and Jews and therefore do not measure up to the Prophet Mohammed and the glory of the Koran. CNN and their effete journalists like Christiane Amanpour (all her war correspondence notwithstanding) are incapable of making such veridical contradistinctions simply because they have long ago made the obsequious choice to feed the masses with palatable slander, even though the masses, as history has so often exposed, often howl for anti-Jewish slander.In Sarajevo, at the height of her fame, Amanpour boasted to the world, "Objectivity doesn't mean treating all sides equally." Apparently this axiom does not apply when one of those sides are the Jews and the State of Israel. The warped logic of her documentary purports that Jewish terrorists are numerous, as active, and as determined to destroy the "goyim" (non-Jew) as are the Muslim terrorists to destroy not only Israel and her Jews, but also the entire Western world. This is one time when I'm sure the Jewish people would insist on being regarded as not equal to Muslims and their sequent, religiously inspired terrorism, not because such equivalence is so unattractive and out of character for Jews, but simply because it's an outrageous lie. Christiane Amanpour, as a result of her evident disdain for objectivity, is now become an accomplice to that lie.Written by Michael Devolin © Copyright 2002-2007 by Magic City Morning Star
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Jihad TV
From Magic City Morning Star
Michael DevolinJihad TV By Michael DevolinAug 13, 2007 - 10:18:50 AM
It seems Vision TV is determined to denigrate Jews and Israel, no matter the public outcry against such programming. Yet again they have given air time to another anti-Jewish bigot from Dil Dil Pakistan's dark repertory of angry Muslim clerics. I am not surprised.
Anita Bromberg of B'nai Brith Canada said of Vision TV that, "Here's a broadcaster who is committed to furthering the values of multiculturalism. To have this many strikes against them in a short period of time is a testament to the difficulties of living in the world today where there are those who will use the cover of religion and multiculturalism to preach hate." Only B'nai Brith, an organization so compromised by political correctness that it is become nothing more than an uncogent noise, would purport the imprudent myth of multiculturalism as having any worth to a Western world now being perniciously altered by Islam's invariant hatred of anything and everything born of our Judeo-Christian culture. The laboured association of Islam with the naive Western ideal of multiculturalism reminds me of the proverb about not being able to eat soup with a knife. Or as Oriana Fallaci put it so well, "Freedom and democracy are not two pieces of chocolate to give as a gift to those who don't know them and don't want to know them."
Vision TV is not worried. How else to explain their bold and shameless disregard for Jewish sensibilities? Vision TV knows very well they do business within a democracy whose politicians defend and protect from extradition and prosecution those Muslims who have trained at Al Quaida camps in Afghanistan and who despise Western values and culture as they would leprosy; whose politicians advocate for a hasty release from prison those Muslims who aspired to shedding "infidel" Canadian blood and were interned initially for reasons of national security. Vision TV realizes they do business within a democracy where national security is defined in terms of political correctness: Oh, what a sin Canada committed by sending poor, poor Maher Arar, the "moderate" Muslim, to Syria! Poor, poor Mr. Arar, who has never explained to the Canadian public his personal friendship with Abdullah Almalki, a known terrorist who in the 1990's worked directly for Osama bin Laden's fundraiser, Ahmed Said Khadr. Poor, poor Mr. Arar, so traumatized during his stay in Syria that, after he returned to Canada, he accepted 10 million dollars from the Canadian government.
Vision TV is not worried about its very public associations with those Muslims who relay to them angry programs from the producers of Dil Dil Pakistan. Any infotainments or documentaries that are anti-Jewish are in vogue these days as much as they were in vogue before and during the Nazi years. If it's anti-Israel or anti-American, the CBC and Vision TV will air it, no questions asked. Canada's media (with the exception of Western Standard magazine) are so afraid of big Mr. Islam that they refused to publish the Mohammed cartoons. Yet they feel no compunction about airing Islamic documentaries denying the Holocaust and vilifying the Jewish people. I notice as well their shameless reluctance about connecting the religion of Islam with terrorism. Whatever would give us the idea that Islam is connected to terrorism? The best CBC and Vision TV can give us is the predictable Muslim narrative, that the Jews are responsible for all the evils in the world, even Islam's terrorists. Heaven forbid we should hear that Islam is responsible for so much bloodshed and war-even genocide, as in Darfur-around the world. Oh yeah, it's not Islam, it's fringe groups (who just happen to be scrupulously observant Muslims).
The fact that Vision TV allowed air time to two of Islam's many, many anti-Jewish clerics is nothing short of a victory for Islam's many, many terrorists. As Ajai Sahni has written, "A victory for terrorism anywhere in the world is a victory for terrorism everywhere in the world." Mr. Russell of the National Post refused to publish a letter in which I articulated a connection of friendship between the CEO of Vision TV and the Islamists who really, really dig Dil Dil Pakistan's furious clerics. Said it was too personal. I guess it's permitted for Muslims to make offensive statements about Jews, like they deserved the Holocaust, or as Sheema Khan wrote in the Globe and Mail recently, "The recurring theme in bin Laden's argument is reciprocity." The West deserves what it gets from Islam's terrorists. I guess that means Canadians deserve anti-Jewish programs being aired on Vision TV. According to Sheema Khan and bin Laden, we've failed to notice that it's Westerners killing Muslims around the world, not Muslims killing non-Muslims (and Muslims). It's Westerners who value Muslim blood as cheap and not the other way around. The way Sheema Khan tells it, Canadians rightly deserve to be killed by Islam's terrorists for refusing to give in to Bin Laden's demands.
Oriana Fallaci wrote that, "Islamism is the new Nazi-Fascism. With Nazi-Fascism, no compromise is possible. No hypocritical tolerance. And those who do not understand this simple reality are feeding the suicide of the West." Bill Roberts and Vision TV are eager contributors to this suicide. Bill Roberts and Vision TV are nothing but puppets of big and scary Mr. Islam and the bullies who are exploiting Canada's accommodative, Judeo-Christian culture.
Vision TV is now become Jihad TV. Their blatant impenitence is a perfect example of why multiculturalism will never work: because it cannot but descend into a tribal feud between those who are many and those who are few. It's simple demographics. Democracy in the hands of a majority Muslim population becomes transmogrified into a vehicle of group identity. This self-evident, pending reality gives a whole new meaning to Abraham Lincoln's statement, "The ballot is stronger than the bullet." Sadly for the West, Islam employs both methods.© Copyright 2002-2007 by Magic City Morning Star
Michael DevolinJihad TV By Michael DevolinAug 13, 2007 - 10:18:50 AM
It seems Vision TV is determined to denigrate Jews and Israel, no matter the public outcry against such programming. Yet again they have given air time to another anti-Jewish bigot from Dil Dil Pakistan's dark repertory of angry Muslim clerics. I am not surprised.
Anita Bromberg of B'nai Brith Canada said of Vision TV that, "Here's a broadcaster who is committed to furthering the values of multiculturalism. To have this many strikes against them in a short period of time is a testament to the difficulties of living in the world today where there are those who will use the cover of religion and multiculturalism to preach hate." Only B'nai Brith, an organization so compromised by political correctness that it is become nothing more than an uncogent noise, would purport the imprudent myth of multiculturalism as having any worth to a Western world now being perniciously altered by Islam's invariant hatred of anything and everything born of our Judeo-Christian culture. The laboured association of Islam with the naive Western ideal of multiculturalism reminds me of the proverb about not being able to eat soup with a knife. Or as Oriana Fallaci put it so well, "Freedom and democracy are not two pieces of chocolate to give as a gift to those who don't know them and don't want to know them."
Vision TV is not worried. How else to explain their bold and shameless disregard for Jewish sensibilities? Vision TV knows very well they do business within a democracy whose politicians defend and protect from extradition and prosecution those Muslims who have trained at Al Quaida camps in Afghanistan and who despise Western values and culture as they would leprosy; whose politicians advocate for a hasty release from prison those Muslims who aspired to shedding "infidel" Canadian blood and were interned initially for reasons of national security. Vision TV realizes they do business within a democracy where national security is defined in terms of political correctness: Oh, what a sin Canada committed by sending poor, poor Maher Arar, the "moderate" Muslim, to Syria! Poor, poor Mr. Arar, who has never explained to the Canadian public his personal friendship with Abdullah Almalki, a known terrorist who in the 1990's worked directly for Osama bin Laden's fundraiser, Ahmed Said Khadr. Poor, poor Mr. Arar, so traumatized during his stay in Syria that, after he returned to Canada, he accepted 10 million dollars from the Canadian government.
Vision TV is not worried about its very public associations with those Muslims who relay to them angry programs from the producers of Dil Dil Pakistan. Any infotainments or documentaries that are anti-Jewish are in vogue these days as much as they were in vogue before and during the Nazi years. If it's anti-Israel or anti-American, the CBC and Vision TV will air it, no questions asked. Canada's media (with the exception of Western Standard magazine) are so afraid of big Mr. Islam that they refused to publish the Mohammed cartoons. Yet they feel no compunction about airing Islamic documentaries denying the Holocaust and vilifying the Jewish people. I notice as well their shameless reluctance about connecting the religion of Islam with terrorism. Whatever would give us the idea that Islam is connected to terrorism? The best CBC and Vision TV can give us is the predictable Muslim narrative, that the Jews are responsible for all the evils in the world, even Islam's terrorists. Heaven forbid we should hear that Islam is responsible for so much bloodshed and war-even genocide, as in Darfur-around the world. Oh yeah, it's not Islam, it's fringe groups (who just happen to be scrupulously observant Muslims).
The fact that Vision TV allowed air time to two of Islam's many, many anti-Jewish clerics is nothing short of a victory for Islam's many, many terrorists. As Ajai Sahni has written, "A victory for terrorism anywhere in the world is a victory for terrorism everywhere in the world." Mr. Russell of the National Post refused to publish a letter in which I articulated a connection of friendship between the CEO of Vision TV and the Islamists who really, really dig Dil Dil Pakistan's furious clerics. Said it was too personal. I guess it's permitted for Muslims to make offensive statements about Jews, like they deserved the Holocaust, or as Sheema Khan wrote in the Globe and Mail recently, "The recurring theme in bin Laden's argument is reciprocity." The West deserves what it gets from Islam's terrorists. I guess that means Canadians deserve anti-Jewish programs being aired on Vision TV. According to Sheema Khan and bin Laden, we've failed to notice that it's Westerners killing Muslims around the world, not Muslims killing non-Muslims (and Muslims). It's Westerners who value Muslim blood as cheap and not the other way around. The way Sheema Khan tells it, Canadians rightly deserve to be killed by Islam's terrorists for refusing to give in to Bin Laden's demands.
Oriana Fallaci wrote that, "Islamism is the new Nazi-Fascism. With Nazi-Fascism, no compromise is possible. No hypocritical tolerance. And those who do not understand this simple reality are feeding the suicide of the West." Bill Roberts and Vision TV are eager contributors to this suicide. Bill Roberts and Vision TV are nothing but puppets of big and scary Mr. Islam and the bullies who are exploiting Canada's accommodative, Judeo-Christian culture.
Vision TV is now become Jihad TV. Their blatant impenitence is a perfect example of why multiculturalism will never work: because it cannot but descend into a tribal feud between those who are many and those who are few. It's simple demographics. Democracy in the hands of a majority Muslim population becomes transmogrified into a vehicle of group identity. This self-evident, pending reality gives a whole new meaning to Abraham Lincoln's statement, "The ballot is stronger than the bullet." Sadly for the West, Islam employs both methods.© Copyright 2002-2007 by Magic City Morning Star
Saturday, June 30, 2007
The Balloonist's View
From Magic City Morning Star
Michael DevolinThe Balloonist's ViewBy Michael DevolinJun 12, 2007 - 7:57:21 AM
I was admonished recently by a seasoned writer who told me that confessing to a friendship with Jews in my articles would surely preclude them from publication. Ironically, the article in question was all about the absurdity and imprudence of political correctness. I had remarked, basically, that Islam and the Muslim are making headway in the Western media, free from censorship or excoriation, saying the nastiest things imaginable about Jews and the State of Israel while simultaneously their Islamist brothers and sisters are attempting to blow every corner of the world to hell and gone. Judaism and the Jew, in contrast, despite their slandered dead and wounded, are banished to far-flung blogs and obscure periodicals as mere afterthoughts and journalistic flip-flops.
What should be apparent to all who assume the defence of rational thought and traditional Western jurisprudence is that we, the rational and the sane, are losing a propaganda war while Islam and their unctuous advocates in the media are winning it. Those who think that being prudent and perceptive will win the day should think again.
For example, Jews, whose religion [Judaism] has always advocated mercy and truth, virtues adopted by Christianity (but apparently beyond the grasp of Islam), have now been transmogrified by major news outlets as seemingly strange and fringe elements of Western societies. Conversely, Muslim terrorists and their apologists are continually portrayed as deserving of our pity and, even worse, our tax dollars. We have politicians about, like Jack Layton and Stephen Dion in Canada, who voice more their fears of Canadian soldiers mistreating Muslim Taliban prisoners than they do their objections to Muslim Taliban terrorists exploding roadside bombs in the midst of our soldiers and Afghanistan's innocent Muslim civilians. How perverse it that?
The media talking-heads and academia that effect this transmutation of basic logic do so with the condescending attitude of grade-school teachers who believe the rest of mankind, parent and child alike, will never learn grammar and will surely never truly appreciate Catcher in the Rye. These self-aggrandized protagonists assure us that we are altogether wrong about what is most obvious, like the attendant violence of veridical Islam - the only Islam the world will ever know and not the dressed-up and theoretical version.
Canadians, for example, are enchanted into believing that Muslims from the foreigner-forbidden Arab Middle East working at a nuclear reactor in the middle of McMaster University's campus in Hamilton, Ontario is not an immediate problem. Americans, to use another example, are told not to be nonplussed about Keith Ellison, a Democrat, rubbing elbows with the leaders of the Muslim American Society, a group whose history is connected to the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization responsible for creating such shining examples of Islam as Al Qaeda, Hamas, and Islamic Egyptian Jihad. Such arrogance and imprudence reminds me of something H.L. Mencken wrote about those who believe they are enabled to see more than others below them, "Balloonists have an unsurpassed view of the scenery, but there is always the possibility that it may collide with them."
Written by Michael Devolin© Copyright 2002-2007 by Magic City Morning Star
Michael DevolinThe Balloonist's ViewBy Michael DevolinJun 12, 2007 - 7:57:21 AM
I was admonished recently by a seasoned writer who told me that confessing to a friendship with Jews in my articles would surely preclude them from publication. Ironically, the article in question was all about the absurdity and imprudence of political correctness. I had remarked, basically, that Islam and the Muslim are making headway in the Western media, free from censorship or excoriation, saying the nastiest things imaginable about Jews and the State of Israel while simultaneously their Islamist brothers and sisters are attempting to blow every corner of the world to hell and gone. Judaism and the Jew, in contrast, despite their slandered dead and wounded, are banished to far-flung blogs and obscure periodicals as mere afterthoughts and journalistic flip-flops.
What should be apparent to all who assume the defence of rational thought and traditional Western jurisprudence is that we, the rational and the sane, are losing a propaganda war while Islam and their unctuous advocates in the media are winning it. Those who think that being prudent and perceptive will win the day should think again.
For example, Jews, whose religion [Judaism] has always advocated mercy and truth, virtues adopted by Christianity (but apparently beyond the grasp of Islam), have now been transmogrified by major news outlets as seemingly strange and fringe elements of Western societies. Conversely, Muslim terrorists and their apologists are continually portrayed as deserving of our pity and, even worse, our tax dollars. We have politicians about, like Jack Layton and Stephen Dion in Canada, who voice more their fears of Canadian soldiers mistreating Muslim Taliban prisoners than they do their objections to Muslim Taliban terrorists exploding roadside bombs in the midst of our soldiers and Afghanistan's innocent Muslim civilians. How perverse it that?
The media talking-heads and academia that effect this transmutation of basic logic do so with the condescending attitude of grade-school teachers who believe the rest of mankind, parent and child alike, will never learn grammar and will surely never truly appreciate Catcher in the Rye. These self-aggrandized protagonists assure us that we are altogether wrong about what is most obvious, like the attendant violence of veridical Islam - the only Islam the world will ever know and not the dressed-up and theoretical version.
Canadians, for example, are enchanted into believing that Muslims from the foreigner-forbidden Arab Middle East working at a nuclear reactor in the middle of McMaster University's campus in Hamilton, Ontario is not an immediate problem. Americans, to use another example, are told not to be nonplussed about Keith Ellison, a Democrat, rubbing elbows with the leaders of the Muslim American Society, a group whose history is connected to the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization responsible for creating such shining examples of Islam as Al Qaeda, Hamas, and Islamic Egyptian Jihad. Such arrogance and imprudence reminds me of something H.L. Mencken wrote about those who believe they are enabled to see more than others below them, "Balloonists have an unsurpassed view of the scenery, but there is always the possibility that it may collide with them."
Written by Michael Devolin© Copyright 2002-2007 by Magic City Morning Star
From Magic City Morning Star
Michael DevolinGaza: Another of Islam's Reality ShowsBy Michael DevolinJun 20, 2007 - 8:26:25 AM
Islam has no moderates. Islam represents only Muslims, which includes those who are transiting away from that congenital humanity they inherited through nascency-a humanity that, properly motivated, defies the insensate culture bequeathed them from the Koran-and those who have already protruded beyond that humanity, having made the journey to veridical Islam, which now includes the blood-for-blood reality show presently being played out in Gaza by Muslim terrorists belonging to Hamas and Fatah.
I remember that but a few days ago, the media were comparing Hamas and Fatah, describing Fatah as "secular" and "the more moderate" of the two. Fatah, in my opinion, is nothing more than a terrorist group driven by the lure of billions in "foreign aid" currencies, directed by a senior citizen terrorist who now adapts, as an imposed prerequisite to receiving these same billions, the cavil of statecraft. And now Abbas' Fatah gunmen, in a public display of what has evolved as Islam's peculiar avant-garde statecraft, are killing Hamas supporters in the streets. Where is the moderation in that? And how is this behaviour any different from that of Hamas' gunmen who, not to be outdone, are killing Fatah gunmen in the streets? Islam has given a whole new meaning to the term "vicious circle."
And please, can anyone enlighten me as to what is "secularism" in Gaza, because every time I watch TV news casts about either of these two Islamic killing fraternities, whether Hamas or Fatah, I see men with an AK47 in one hand and a Koran in the other? It seems to me that in the context of Gaza and the so-called Palestinians, both secularism and Islam are neither indicative nor portentous of any sort of denouement to the obsession these people seem to have with killing each other whenever they are not busy killing Israeli Jews. These people are ready to govern a "Palestinian state" contiguous to Israel? I don't think so. Such a state, whether governed by Fatah or Hamas, would be, to borrow a phrase from Geoffrey Wheatcroft, "an absurdity, a noble failure, or something in between."
And what relevance does secularism have within the bounds of the so-called Palestinian struggle anyway? After all, this is the same populace that voted in the Muslim zealots of Hamas and rejected "the more moderate" Fatah. What pertinence, therefore, has Fatah's miasmic secularism in a religious setting as autocratic as Islam's? None.
After all is said and done, whether within or without Gaza, the hemorrhaging of whatever frail unity previously existed between Fatah and Hamas is nothing more than the sectarian violence that follows Islam around the globe. Yesterday it was Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Somalia. Today it's Gaza: another of Islam's reality shows.
Written by Michael Devolin© Copyright 2002-2007 by Magic City Morning Star
Michael DevolinGaza: Another of Islam's Reality ShowsBy Michael DevolinJun 20, 2007 - 8:26:25 AM
Islam has no moderates. Islam represents only Muslims, which includes those who are transiting away from that congenital humanity they inherited through nascency-a humanity that, properly motivated, defies the insensate culture bequeathed them from the Koran-and those who have already protruded beyond that humanity, having made the journey to veridical Islam, which now includes the blood-for-blood reality show presently being played out in Gaza by Muslim terrorists belonging to Hamas and Fatah.
I remember that but a few days ago, the media were comparing Hamas and Fatah, describing Fatah as "secular" and "the more moderate" of the two. Fatah, in my opinion, is nothing more than a terrorist group driven by the lure of billions in "foreign aid" currencies, directed by a senior citizen terrorist who now adapts, as an imposed prerequisite to receiving these same billions, the cavil of statecraft. And now Abbas' Fatah gunmen, in a public display of what has evolved as Islam's peculiar avant-garde statecraft, are killing Hamas supporters in the streets. Where is the moderation in that? And how is this behaviour any different from that of Hamas' gunmen who, not to be outdone, are killing Fatah gunmen in the streets? Islam has given a whole new meaning to the term "vicious circle."
And please, can anyone enlighten me as to what is "secularism" in Gaza, because every time I watch TV news casts about either of these two Islamic killing fraternities, whether Hamas or Fatah, I see men with an AK47 in one hand and a Koran in the other? It seems to me that in the context of Gaza and the so-called Palestinians, both secularism and Islam are neither indicative nor portentous of any sort of denouement to the obsession these people seem to have with killing each other whenever they are not busy killing Israeli Jews. These people are ready to govern a "Palestinian state" contiguous to Israel? I don't think so. Such a state, whether governed by Fatah or Hamas, would be, to borrow a phrase from Geoffrey Wheatcroft, "an absurdity, a noble failure, or something in between."
And what relevance does secularism have within the bounds of the so-called Palestinian struggle anyway? After all, this is the same populace that voted in the Muslim zealots of Hamas and rejected "the more moderate" Fatah. What pertinence, therefore, has Fatah's miasmic secularism in a religious setting as autocratic as Islam's? None.
After all is said and done, whether within or without Gaza, the hemorrhaging of whatever frail unity previously existed between Fatah and Hamas is nothing more than the sectarian violence that follows Islam around the globe. Yesterday it was Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Somalia. Today it's Gaza: another of Islam's reality shows.
Written by Michael Devolin© Copyright 2002-2007 by Magic City Morning Star
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