Islam: The Real Culprit
Religion Michael DevolinFebruary 9, 2008
It is written in the Jewish Torah that Jacob, after wrestling with an angel, inquired of him, "Divulge, if you please, your name." Jacob wanted to know with whom he was wrestling. Afterward, he asked the angel to bless him, and the angel, it is recorded in the Torah, blessed Jacob. There is a lesson here for the Western world today: Know with whom you are wrestling, and know also whether your opponent, after you make peace with him, can benefit you.
I believe our so-called experts - media-junkies like Daniel Pipes for example - have become so buried by self-aggrandizement and megalomania in their blind pursuit of presenting to the Western masses every week yet another of their remedies to the crisis befalling the non-Muslim world that they have omitted, whether intentionally or otherwise, the real culprit behind all these problems, which, in my opinion, is the religion of Islam. Here you have Daniel Pipes suggesting Israel annex Jewish land to Muslim Egypt; there you have President Bush suggesting Israel donate Jerusalem to Palestinian terrorists. And all this time Islam, wherever Islam is the predominant religion, continues teaching its adherents to hate these good-willed and insanely generous and naive non-Muslim types: take no Christians or Jews for your friends - unless, of course, they are donating billions to your Muslim nation or giving away Jewish land to your Muslim terrorist brothers.
I watched a debate on TV the other night during which Sam Harris (The End of Faith) opined that to proposition the core belief of Islam as being non-violent is ridiculous. In one of his articles (Sam Harris on the Reality of Islam) he writes, "It is time we recognized - and obliged the Muslim world to recognize - that ‘Muslim extremism' is not extreme among Muslims." This statement is altogether contrary to Daniel Pipes proudly proclaiming to the world that "moderate Muslims" will save the nation of Turkey from Islamic extremism. Daniel Pipes, it should be noted, also at the time and in the same article, besmirched all my non-Muslim friends who are, at this moment, heart-and-soul and fearfully engaged in warning the West of what they perceive is the malevolent threat of Islam the religion. Daniel Pipes is one of those cloud-covered critics who deem everyday human beings who actually feel afraid of Islam (as if that's illogical!) as being mentally unstable. I personally think Daniel Pipes' obsequious dedication to political expediency has left him afflicted with a morbid blunting and deterioration of his senses. But that's just me.
I recently had the pleasure of meeting California's talk show host Arlene Peck. Here is a woman who has never backed down from kicking Israel's enemies (one of which is the religion of Islam) squarely in the behind. From our conversation I gathered that she has identified Islam the religion as being the real culprit behind suicide bombings and contemporary anti-Jewish hatred. Arlene's brave stance is no surprise to me, since women, when you consider examples like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Oriana Fallaci, and Wafa Sultan, are making a far more overt stand against the religion of Islam and its attendant violence than are men.
In a study published by The Journal of Conflict Resolution by Yale University biostatistician Dr. Edward H. Kaplan, and Dr. Charles A. Small of the Yale Institute for the Study of Global Anti-Semitism (anti-Jewish hatred) we read that,
"In the Muslim world, attitudes toward Jews remain starkly negative, including virtually unanimous unfavorable ratings of 98% in Jordan and 97% in Egypt. Muslims living in Western countries have a more moderate view of Jews - still more negative than positive, but not nearly by the lopsided margins that prevail in Muslim countries."
No small wonder then that women, like those fearless souls I mention above, against whom the religion of Islam dictates much discriminatory denigration, are at the forefront in exposing to the Western world these malefic trends of Islam the religion - to the shame of politically constrained egoists like Daniel Pipes.
It is written that the angel, after he had agreed to a truce with Jacob, blessed him. The non-Muslim West will never experience peace with Islam, let alone a blessing forthcoming from its savage ideology. Islam the religion, as exampled by Islam-dominated nations, does not accord the non-Muslim equal status. And what patriotic, freedom-loving American or Canadian or Brit or Australian would accept such a servile and degradative denouement? Moreover, who of us, whether Canadian or American or Brit or Australian, would accept this same degradative denouement imposed upon us by Islam's litigious, religiously driven expansionists? Hence I ask the hypothetical question: After we make peace with Islam (even if peace with Islam were actually attainable), how could such an insalubrious, intolerant, and racist religion actually benefit Western "kaffirs"? The answer is that it can't, and Islam's bloody history is evidence of this undeniable truth.
Islam holds no blessing in reserve for Western man, only tyranny and brutality. No amount of apologia, sycophantism, flattery, sophism, and cavil will ever alter this devastatingly portentous reality.
Edward Watson Howe wrote that, "What people say behind your back is your standing in the community." Regardless the inroads Islam's pronoid protagonists believe they have achieved, whether by exploiting what has transpired to be the West's imprudently accommodative justice system, whether by exploiting what most non-Muslim Westerners perceive to be Islam's tradition of violence against those who openly oppose its expansions, nothing will change the fact that the majority of Western "kaffirs" quietly realize by now that Islam the religion is the real culprit here - the terrorists and hate-driven imams who give substance to its terrifying ideology are logically but dreadfully secondary.
I believe that Islam the religion, whether "over there" or "over here," is even now forcing Western governments into that position John F. Kennedy defined when he warned that, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
Mr. Devolin’s piece first ran in the Magic City Morning Star
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Christopher Hitchens: Secularist Fundamentalist
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
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
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
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