"Consider how we as atheists are constrained to talk about Islam. And Christians often complain that atheists balance - and the secular media, generally - balance every discussion of Islam with a discussion of extremist Christianity. The usual mode is to say, 'Well, they have their jihadists, but we have people who kill abortion doctors.' I think our Christian neighbors, even the craziest of them, are right to be outraged by this pretense of evenhandedness. The truth is that Islam is quite a bit scarier and more culpable for needless human misery at this moment than Christianity has been for a very, very long time. And we have to point this out."You might remember that Thomas Friedman recently wrote an op-ed from Iraq noticing that some Sunni militias were fighting alongside American troops against al-Qaeda, and he asked a Sunni militant why he was doing this. And the militant said that he had recently seen an al-Qaeda member decapitate an eight-year-old girl, and this convinced him that the American crusader forces were the lesser of two evils. Okay, great, so even Muslims, even Sunni militants, can discern the line between ordinary crazy Islam and the utterly crazy, once it is drawn in the spilled blood of little girls. This is a basis for hope of sorts.
"We have to be clear, unremittingly clear, about what is on the other side of that line. This is what we and the rest of the civilized world, and the semi-civilized world, are facing: Utter religious lunacy and barbarism in the name of Islam, with, I'm unhappy to say, some mainstream theology to back it up."To be evenhanded, as we are constrained to be as atheists, when discussing the problem of Islam, is to misconstrue the problem. The refrain that all religions have their extremists is bullshit - all religions don't have these extremists. Some religions have never had these extremists.
"A recent poll in the UK showed that a third of young British Muslims say they want to live under sharia law and think that anyone who wants to leave the faith should be put to death for apostasy. This is a third of British Muslims. 68% of British Muslims think that their neighbors who insult Islam should be arrested and prosecuted. 78% think that the Danish cartoonists should be brought to justice. These people do not have a clue about what constitutes a civil society.
"It seems to me that reports like this coming out of Muslim communities living in the West should concern us before anything else about religion concerns us."
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Sam Harris on Islam
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Monday, October 15, 2007
Ayaan Hirsi Ali Saves Civilization
Horribly mutilated at the age of five at the harsh hands of her stern grandmother and a local barber with a pair of scissors who cut off her genitals like a slab of meat, Ayaan Hirsi Ali speaks out loudly and clearly that such atrocities in her native Somalia are done not only to virtually every female of a certain age, but also IN THE NAME OF ISLAM. In fact, it was surprising for her to discover that there are claims - many quite frantic and unconvincing - that Islam does not call for female genital mutilation or "circumcision," as this despicable "cultural tradition" is euphemistically and flaccidly termed. Of course, not only Muslims practice this heinous savagery, but the majority of women and girls with disfigured genitals - an estimated 140 MILLION worldwide at the time of this writing - ARE Muslims, and such oppressive barbarism goes hand in hand with an ideology that without a doubt considers women as second-class subhumans designed mostly for sexual release, baby making and household slavery.
Do yourself and the world a favor - buy this book, read it, digest it, pass it along and support the efforts of the handful of individuals such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali in saving human civilization.
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Saturday, October 06, 2007
The Violent Oppression of Women in Islam
Please read the booklet linked hereto by Robert Spencer and Phyllis Chesler, and pass it along to all those who love life and justice. We need many more voices like these hard-working individuals who are risking their necks to expose the harsh realities behind Islam.
The bottom line is that MILLIONS OF WOMEN AND GIRLS ARE SUFFERING EVERY DAY WITHIN ISLAM, and not doing anything about constitutes a tacit endorsement of such suffering.
The Violent Oppression of WomenFinal note from Acharya: I don't usually engage in the politics of "right v. left," but I have to say that, in the case of Islam, the lefty liberals have driven me and many others straight into the Neocon camp. For those who are bothered by the "staged stoning" of the pic above, please see this disturbing video of a real stoning - albeit of MEN, who likewise suffer horribly under the sadistic fascism called Islam.
By Robert Spencer and Phyllis Chesler
FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, October 05, 2007The booklet that you are about to read details some of the principal ways in which women suffer in the Islamic world - often with religious and cultural sanction. Many of these crimes against women, such as wife-beating, are ordained by the Qur'an itself; others, such as female genital mutilation and honor killing, are praised by Islamic clerics and hallowed by Islamic culture. That feminists in the West remain silent about this deeply ingrained and institutionalized mistreatment of women, and even ally with groups that have devoted themselves to the spread of Islamic law that justifies this mistreatment, is one of the unconscionable scandals of our time.
This article is a segment of a series being run as part of our nation-wide campus effort, Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, which will be held on 200 university and college campuses on October 22-26. Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week is a national effort to focus on all the victims of Islamo-Fascist Jihad -- as well as to counter the lies of the academic Left, which seeks to deny the evil, and even the very existence, of our enemy in this terror war. In this way, Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week hopes to educate American students and to enable them to rally to defend their country.
In terms of the booklet of our subject today, its cover is a still photograph that epitomizes Islamic oppression of women, and it has come to also epitomize the Western feminist non-response to it. The picture comes from a Dutch film called De Steen (The Stone), directed by Mahnaz Tamizi, and features the actress Smadar Monsinos. The Stone dramatizes the barbaric treatment of women in Islamic countries. It accurately depicts the reality of Islamic Sharia law regarding adultery: when a couple is caught in adultery, the man is jailed while the woman is stoned to death.
It is a telling indication of the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the Left that it has fastened upon our use of this picture to try to discredit Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, since the photo does not depict an actual event - as if women weren't being stoned to death under Sharia law in Iran and some other Muslim countries today. In reality, eight women are currently in prison in Iran awaiting death by stoning for the crime of adultery. A mother was sentenced to be stoned to death in Iran for adultery just last week. It is typical of the Left to try to cast opprobrium not upon those responsible for these harsh realities, but upon us who are trying to draw attention to them in the name of human rights.
It may have seemed inconceivable that feminists and their allies would defend those who bury women in the earth and kill them by throwing large stones at them, but that is the ultimate thrust of the Left's outcry against our use of this picture and against Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week in general. Such are the ironies of our troubled age.
In this booklet are realities that should be of paramount concern not just for feminists in the West and their allies on the Left, but of all those who are concerned with the universality of human rights and the dignity of every human being.
The rest of the images here are unfortunately quite real, including the blood pool from a victim of female genital mutilation, the hanging of an Iranian woman from a crane, and the Iranian victim of a severe beating because she was not properly covered up (reproduced here with permission from Dr. Homa Darabi). I hesitate to post here some of the worst images, including that of the genital area of a victim of female genital mutilation.
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