Making excuses for Shahzad
The meme is shaping up: poor pitiful Faisal Shahzad, helpless hapless victim of the economic crisis (i.e. Bush, capitalism, Wall Street, fat cats…).
If it’s not said outright, it’s implied: the capitalist devils made him do it. After all, when you fall on economic hard times, don’t you want to go out and bomb a bunch of tourists and theatergoers in Times Square? Doesn’t everybody?
Here’s a typical article in the press, entitled, “Times Square bombing suspect’s life had unraveled.”
This concept as described in the article—a life unraveling—does not take into account personal responsibility. But although it is most certainly true that people can fall on hard times through no fault of their own, sometimes a person is in fact the cause of his/her difficulties. What’s more, even if that is not the case and the person is completely a victim of circumstance, it is still up to that person to react in a way that shows (dare I say use this archaic word?) character. Shahzad showed his—a bad one.
We don’t really know the cause of Shahzad’s hard times. We are told he “left” a good job, “lost” a home to foreclosure, and moved into a rundown apartment in Bridgeport, Connecticut. No explanation of why these things happened. For example, was he fired or did he quit? Was his job performance poor? Spokespeople for the company where he had worked, Affinion Group, say he “left on good terms.” This is ambiguous, but it certainly doesn’t immediately conjure up the idea that Shahzad was fired.
What’s more, he and his wife left their home very precipitously. According to neighbors, “”It was like they just picked up everything they wanted and just left one day.” They “moved out abruptly and left behind a mess of food, broken dishes and baby formula in the cabinets.” In addition, Shahzad told a broker trying to sell his home that the bank should be allowed take it, and that he intended to return to Pakistan. Sounds like a plan—and one that Shahzad proceeded to implement. When returned to this country (apparently minus his wife and kids), he rented the seedy Bridgeport apartment, which came equipped with a private garage. The latter seems to have been the major draw, because that was where he stored his bomb-making materials.
Just an average Joe driven mad by a combination of Bush’s Iraq War and Bush’s recession, right? Wrong. Not only do we not know which came first, Shahzad’s terrorist choices or his hard luck, we don’t even know whether his financial reversals were of his own doing or not. Either way, however, it does not matter. If he’d been Joe Schmo from Connecticut, rather than Faisal Shahzad from Connecticut via Pakistan, it would have been highly unlikely (despite the left’s desire to equate the right with Islamic terrorists—if Timothy McVeigh had not existed they would have had to invent him) that he would have dealt with whatever reversals he’d had by loading a van with explosives and trying to light it in Times Square.
That almost always requires a mindset formed by Islamic terrorism and macerated in its beliefs. Nor was Shahzad any sort of lone wolf; he had help in Pakistan (although fortunately, not enough to enable him to get his bomb to work properly). The significance of Pakistan in all of this should not be lost. Although it is nominally our ally, Pakistan has been a breeding ground for Islamic terrorism for quite some time.
Pakistan’s history of pan-Islamism does not mean that all Pakistanis, much less everyone of Pakistani origin, hold extremist views. But it does explain why a larger percentage of Pakistanis than, say, Indonesians or Tunisians, are likely to see the world through the narrow prism of their faith. The ISI’s reluctance to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism””training camps, a web of ultra-orthodox madrassas that preach violence, and terrorist groups such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba””ensure that Pakistan remains a magnet for any Muslim with a grudge against the world and the urge to do something violent about it.
These are the factors that created a Faisal Shahzad—and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. We ignore them at our peril.
[ADDENDUM: Shahzad is reported to have resigned from his job at Affinion Group in mid-2009.]
Of course they’re making excuses. They have to. They are a party of quislings led by a traitor.
They are looking for something unthreatening that explains what Shahzad became. Why? Because reality is too terrible to contemplate? From the Leftist point of view, it is easier to say that he was driven to do what he did because of the external (to him) evils of Bush/Iraq/Capitalism. Leftists do not want to believe that there really are bad people out there who want to kill them just because they are Americans and for no other reason. That would necessarily entail backing away from some of the central tenets of Leftist dogma.
Now, now, Vanderleun, it’s not that simple. If it were simply a matter of the Democratic Party hating America, then it would be easy for the American people to dismiss them. Democrats love America, or at least the America they are trying to create. Ultimately, any anti-American rhetoric people like Contess Brewer may speak stems from their worldview, which advocates a radical redistribution of wealth and power to absolve the guilt of the alleged persecutors and mitigate the anger of the allegedly oppressed.
As that mentality relates to the topic at hand, it’s easy to twist yourself around and look at the war from a hardcore liberal’s perspective.
1. America is a font of evil and ignorance, which must be artificially cured.
2. All opposition to America stems from the harm America has caused other people.
3. Terrorism is justified by righteous anger against America.
That’s their logic. It moves into the classic “In order to prevent terrorism, we must change ourselves to suit them” mentality, which is profoundly anti-American in origin. Even though most liberals would be shocked at the allegation that they are anti-American, their ideas do stem from that mindset. It is mostly an unconscious reaction, though, and I do believe that on the conscious level Democrats love America, or think they do.
– G
This, in a nutshell, is the problem. The Reds/ liberals/ Democrats/ socialists/ progressives/ whatever the hell they’re calling themselves today have destroyed the notion of personal responsibility.
Shahzad is personally responsible for his actions. No one else has any responsibility for them.
Lost his job? I don’t care.
Lost his house? I don’t care.
Can’t afford a big screen TV? I don’t care.
Grew up in poverty? I don’t care.
Didn’t read the Harvard Classics? I don’t care.
Doesn’t floss? I don’t care.
Didn’t get his tires rotated? I don’t care.
None of these things are relevant to the issue at hand, which is:
Did he construct and plant a car bomb?
Was he of sufficiently sound mind to know what he was doing, and that it was wrong?
Now I care.
The following is not going to matter to the dimwits in the mainstream media who are apparently attracted to their boneheaded political correctness like maggots to a cowpie, but here goes:
I am an American of Middle Eastern ancestry. My family’s religious background is Muslim. My grandmother and one of my aunts have done the Hajj. Unfortunately, I too have fallen on hard times. A year and a half ago my wife lost her job as a benefits specialist, and because hers was our primary income (I’m a college professor) we are not sure if we will be able to keep our house. Our lives have been full of worry and depression over the last year and a half, and Obama’s idiotic policies don’t give me much hope for the future.
And yet, in spite of all this, I have no desire to bomb anybody, not even Obama – or the Democratic leadership in Congress, surely a group of misfits more deserving of detonation, so to speak, than most people on this planet.
I’m really sorry if this is beyond the comprehension of leftists in the media, but based upon my own experience, it IS apparently possible to be a Middle Eastern American who has fallen on hard times and still behave like a normal, civilized human being with no desire to hurt anybody. The very idea the Faisal Shahzad’s bad luck should be seen as an entitlement to bomb Americans is as insulting as it is stupid. Whatever the underlying reasons why Shahzad became an evil son-of-a-bitch, the fact remains: he is an evil son-of-a-bitch, and I hope he rots in Hell.
abdul, great comment. Sorry to hear you’ve fallen on hard times, and I hope things improve for you, soon.
To be clear, in my comment above, the “I don’t cares” were in the context of a crime.
One of the articles I happened to read about our poor Jihadi said that, in addition to taking out something like a S225K first mortgage on the house, he sometime later pulled out $65K via a home equity loan.
Much as the MSM is trying to paint that picture, we are not talking about your average Joe here.
If you are engaged in the Jihad that your God has commanded you to wage by all means possible against the accursed unbelievers and their ignorance (Jahilyya), are you really going to–except for cover–be nice and play by their rules?
My suspicion is that he intended to game the system all along–why help the Infidels?–and had no intention to perform on any of these loans ’cause he had more important things to do, like figuring out how to blow up as many Infidels as possible.
It would be foolish to entirely discount economic hardships as an incentive to adopt fundamentalist thought, but it is not the only factor. The more important factor is communication between radical Muslims and this particular individual. With enough leverage and enough time, you can convince someone of almost anything, especially if they are already leaning towards your side due to the media’s anti-War on Terror angle.
Welcome, abdul. I hope finances work out for you.
Are you Muslim?
George Weigel wrote about our country’s shortcomings in dealing with terrorism, and said it stemmed from the single-mindedness of secularism in our elites.
The world outside of North America, Europe and (Australia) has a very religious dimension to their thoughts. But our elites can’t even communicate / understand the religious within our own country. This puts us (our elites) at a significant disadvantage in general. When it comes to islamic fundamentalism specifically, our leaders are in the dark! You can see this in the way they are framing the narrative. Part of it is willful, but I think that they are trying to make sense of it themselves.
Even if some of our elites are a bit religious, I sometimes think that deep down they think ‘does anyone really believe this stuff?’ Well, yes, a lot of us do, as does a lot of the rest of the world.
Algeria should be a lesson and taught that the radical Muslims will not allow other Muslims to be moderate. They simply use terror on their fellow believers as they do their enemies.
Islam is not a religion of peace. The saving grace is that what Islam requires is beyond what most men and women and civilizations want to live with or endure. Islam contains its own demise because it is parasitic.
Can it be reformed? That begs the question why. Can any reasonable person see a positive value in Islam’s founder and the Quran? Winston Churchill didn’t think so and he was pretty wise.
Don’t let the pull of political correctness restrain you from seeking and speaking the truth. And beware of trusting any Muslim. When they lack power they use deceit.
True, but notice how the MSM default to the economic explanation, reflexively adopting historical materialism writ small. These “Marxism Lite” adherents truly do not grasp how anyone could ever operate on any other basis than economic, which is why their solution to all known problems involves money, programs, and training (to help problem-generators to make money, and thereby cease to be a problem). (It’s also why they accuse those disagreeing with them of being paid to do so (e.g., AGW skeptics must be paid by Big Oil — in which case, where the hell’s my check?); the possibility that someone might legitimately disagree apparently doesn’t occur to them.)
Leftists do not recognize the possibility that people sometimes base their actions on philosophical principles (good, bad, or indifferent) quite distinct from their economic interests. All conflict must have economics as its “root cause” (one of Marx’s expressions that I particularly dislike), and thus can be ameliorated through economic means. Hence they propose to deal with Islamic terrorism through aid, programs, training and education to alleviate poverty and ignorance, unmindful that many prominent al Qaeda leaders were/are neither poor nor uneducated (e.g., bin Laden is a multimillionaire, and Zawahiri qualified as a surgeon). What aid or programs would have dissuaded kamikaze pilots?
I’d say that even more than economics, human behavior is driven by the need for meaning (self-actualization in Maslow’s terms). Some find that meaning in religion, others in group (national, ethnic, tribal, or political) allegiance. (Ironically, leftists find it in socialism, the belief that economics drives all human behavior, for which they are willing to forego advancing their economic interests. You can almost hear God chuckling at that one.) And, of course, some never find it, hence the all-too-common travails of those come into wealth too easily (e.g., Christina Onassis, the Kennedys, Elvis, Michael Jackson, Anna Nicole Smith, any number of actors and actresses, lottery winners).
I saw a Yahoo news headline something like. “Pakistani man admits to car bomb, motive still mystery”.
Surely the press and political class in this country has to be very worried that the increasing level of deceit they have to engage in to maintain their narrative is going to crash down all around them at some point. Tomorrow wouldn’t be soon enough for me.
Scene in WWII Japan:
Flight Instructor: Okay, you are going to get in your airplane, take off, and crash into the enemy.
Student: Are you out of your freaking mind!
This guy isn’t some “average Muhammad” from Pakistan. His father’s a former government minister! He has a rich and powerful family. For anyone to blame hardship for “forcing” him to this act of terrorist violence is to make excuses for evil.
destroyed the notion of personal responsibility
Of course. This means the nanny-state has to move in and protect you (and everyone else) from your tragic mistakes. From their vantage point, we’re too stoopid to live.
Didn’t those Kamikaze’s adopt capitalism and become a very prosperous and peaceful society? Hmmmmm
“Our enemy is the political Islamic movement which holds that Islam should have a dominant say in governing . . .
Islamic trilogy, consisting of the Koran, Hadith and Sira, is the basis of political Islam. . .
In the past few years sophisticated scientific analysis of the trilogy has been carried out which points to the very dominant political nature of the trilogy . . .
Muslims [are prevented] from acquiring new knowledge to create a better future for themselves and are commanded to wage a religious war with unbelievers until the whole humanity is converted to Islam. . . ”
Excerpts from “The Art of War on Terror: Triumphing over Political Islam and the Axis of Jihad,” by Moorthy Muthuswamy.
Are you suggesting a couple of nukes would cheer up the Islamic situation too?
The endless bestowing of victimhood on those manifestly unworthy is never ending. Some seem to have an obsessive need to find the “root causes” for horrific, blood-thirsty acts, perhaps because to accept the existence of evil is too disturbing for such sensitive, politically sensitive souls.
Ted Bundy, the thankfully late serial killer, was the subject of such armchair psychology by the right (which wanted to explain him by way of porn) and the left (for all the usual “it’s all the fault of society” reasons). But the reality is far more simple. He did it because he liked it. He liked rape and torture and murder.
Terrorists are sociopaths, but on a broader scale. They do what they do not just because they don’t like Israel, because George Bush said mean things about them, or because of the Crusades, but because many believe it to be a solemn religious duty, and because they like it. They just like to torture, rape and kill. The more damage they can do, the more they like it.
Evil exists and those who recognize and fight it are anything but simplistic. Those who do not are just foolish enough to advocate their own extinction at the hands of scum more than willing to oblige them. Only those simple, unsophisticated folks who fight evil keep their betters alive and well.
To Tom:
My family is Muslim by cultural inheritance. My father has given it up because of the hopeless backwardness he sees in that part of the world. I myself have taken things a step further; I am officially an apostate, in that I categorically and vehemently reject Islam. But I am not an atheist either, for I have no more desire to resemble Bill Maher than Ayman al-Zawahiri. This summer I will be baptized into the Catholic church, the religion of my wife’s family. Faith in something higher than this miserable species to which we belong helps me cope with life on a day-to-day basis. So while I admire people like Wafa Sultan and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, both Muslim apostates who have become atheist, I chose to go down a different path from the one they took.
An intriguing thesis is set forth in “The Banality of Suicide Terrorism: The Naked Truth About the Psychology of Islamic Suicide Bombing,” by Dr. Nancy Kobrin, a psychoanalyst with a Ph.D. in romance and semitic languages.
Basically, an emphasis on the devalued female in Arab Muslim shame honor cultures has developed into a suicide terrorism dynamic. The power and control of females has devastating consequences. The horrific abuse of the female causes dissociation and split-off body parts then engage in honor killings and other violent behavior.
Kind of a circle of life type of thing.
Ted Bundy had mother problems too!
JuliB: You say, “Even if some of our elites are a bit religious, I sometimes think that deep down they think ‘does anyone really believe this stuff?’ Well, yes, a lot of us do, as does a lot of the rest of the world.” I agree that our elites wonder whether anyone really believes this stuff. They demand unquestioning tolerance for foreign believers–especially for Muslims, who come from such backward cultures, and whom they patronize. The patronizing attitude has the added benefit of allowing them simultaneously to think themselves superior and congratulate themselves on their tolerance. They have no such tolerance for the believers in Western societies, though. They think we, like they, should know better.
Bravo, Abdul, bravo. May you find the clarity of true faith in your relationship with God and the Church.
Upbringing is a funny thing. My parents were atheists but got me to church anyway, thank God.
Abdul, you do give me hope. My brother is a college professor seeking work, and I know how discouraging that market is. Perhaps you could consider another?
mikemcdaniel, I somewhat agree. It is not economic hardship so much as economic resentment that drives some to radicalism. Believing that one “deserves” a certain life, as is frequent among those raised in wealth, rapidly leads to personal envy. At that point, any madman with a righteous attitude, so long as it is against the hated society that deprives one of his due, looks good.
Curtis, I would simplify it even more, and put it in less psychoanalytic terms. A society which oppresses women creates narcissistic men in proportion.
Any society which grants boys under five greater status than their mothers cannot help but create spoiled and entitled men. When they cannot succeed to the degree they expect, they will not blame themselves, but their surroundings.
The main problem of Islam is they have no New Testament to counter the old ways.
The clown said he was enraged by the drone strikes in Pakistan.
That means he was enraged at the killing of the guys we consider the bad guys.
IOW, he considers them the good guys.
Is that too simple?
Re abdul7591:
In the media, islam is presented as a religion of peace, which is likened to an arab version of christianity. It is also claimed that there is no islamic theological justification for violence or discrimination against non-muslims. The actions af islamic supremacists are presented as misinterpretations of true islamic doctrine, performed by ill educated men who have been manipulated by misleading propaganda by a minority of corrupted religious leaders.
As a fromer muslim, who is now a catholic, can you comment upon this narrative? Are you sufficiently familiar with the scriptures and tenets of both religions to confirm or refute this narrative?
If the motive of the bomber was not religious, but related to foreclosure upon his house, does this mean that everyone who has been subjected to foreclosure should now be placed upon a terrorist watch list? How many potential mass murderers are being created by the economic problems throughout the world? Will Greece be consumed first by thermobaric explosions as the recession worsens?
The liberal/progressive ideologues claim to understand the motives of islamic terrorists and ascribe them to a mixture of economic disadvantage and anti-colonial resentment. If this explanation is not correct or is only partially complete, then the strategy for confronting a dangerous enemy is founded upon a falsehood and, in my opinion, unlikely to succeed.
A strategy which relies upon luck and the incompetence of the enemy effectively guaruntees that the terrorists will eventually succeed in causing large scale loss of life.
Here is a good discussion with a Danish psychologist who worked with 150 Muslims between 15 and 18 in a Danish correctional institute. He mentions some of the points Avi made but also says the problem goes beyond devoutness to religion and is in fact cultural. I guess we have all read of the honor/shame culture, but he adds his own experiences to the theme.
http://frontpagemag.com/2010/05/05/among-criminal-muslims/?utm_source=FrontPage+Magazine&utm_campaign=a3c8444ca1-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email
It is obvious that our media “analysts” are just parrots. I would love to interview a few of these birds to determine the extent of their reading on and familiarity with the topic of radical Islam. Actually, I think I know something about their expertise, but it would be fun to get it down in black and white.
I’d heard this elsewhere, and perhaps it’s mentioned above, but the mortgage thing, isn’t this just a piece of the whole dismantling of the U.S. infrastructure? By defaulting, he does his little part to aid the economic collapse. Seems as though this guy has been planning this stuff for years, got the wife back home, told the bank to screw, and set it all in motion.
The clown said he was enraged by the drone strikes in Pakistan…he considers them the good guys.
Not too simple at all. But here’s an interesting twist. According to an article I read (can’t recall the source, but it might have been WaPo, WSJ, or NYT), he wasn’t upset by “civilian” casualties, but by the fact that numerous Taliban leaders had been killed.
To John MacLachlan:
Thanks for your question. Boy, I could say a great deal about this, but the short answer is “No, Islam is not at heart a religion of peace, nor has it ever been. It is BY ITS OWN ADMISSION a religion of Jihad, that is, a creed centrally dedicated to the idea that if you are not a believer, it is morally acceptable to lie to you, to cheat you, to steal from you, to discriminate against you, to treat you as less than completely human, and ultimately to kill you. If many individuals in the Muslim world do not act like this, it is usually either because they are not that religious or they have been taught to recite the Koran without understanding what the Arabic text is actually saying.
Islamic history bears this out consistently, not only in its treatment of Jews, but Christians, animist Black-Africans, Hindus and Sikhs, and Buddhists. Those on the secular progressive Left who make arguments of moral equivalency between, say, Christian Evangelicals and Muslims, are either ignorant or deliberately kidding themselves in order to rationalize their infantile resentment of Christianity and conservative Christians like Bush, in particular.
Bill Maher is a case in point. This is a Hollywood nincompoop who like most of his fellows in the entertainment industry has his head so far up his rear end that if he were living in Canada he could skip the 10-month waiting list and given HIMSELF a colonoscopy. Whenever I hear one of these jerks calling Bush – or conservatives generally – “morons” I feel as if I am listening to a manure-eater accusing somebody else of bad breath.
To will: I agree. Jihad is total war. Another area I’ve noticed Jihad in: Medicare fraud. Well, make that just about any financial fraud anywhere.
To Abdul: Wow. Just wow. Great. As Paul Johnson said about Edmund Wilson: a brand from the burning. I disagree with you on one point and I’m sure you’ll agree with my disagree: We are not a miserable race.
See this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/05/AR2010050505288.html?wprss=rss_nation/nationalsecurity
Obama is still asking what causes people to become terrorists. Didn’t he have all the answers even before he was elected?
expat
Rote Zora started in 1974, when they bombed the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany in Karlsruhe to protest against the abortion law
In addition they bombed the Federal Doctor’s Guild (in 1977) numerous sex shops, the cars of landlords, the Siemens company, and the company Nixdorf Computer AG
Rote Zora was a militant feminist group active in Germany from 1974-95.
if you follow history… terrorism has its majority life sourcing from socialism… and its worst inventors, helpers, suppliers, and promoters (of the worst), was the top communist state and the satellites.
the whole idea was to create better and better proxies for fighting.
Support of international terrorism
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitrokhin_Archive#Support_of_international_terrorism
abdul7591
Thank you for your reply. Most of the self described muslims where I live are very liberal and very hospitable. They are tolerant of the beliefs of others. I think that a muslem fundamentalist may consider them almost appostates. It is interesting that one can be a muslim, without understanding what the tenets of the faith are. How many of these would still be muslims if they did know the tenets of their faith? People of all religions tend to cherry-pick and adhere to the doctrines of their faith with which they are comfortable and ignore or diminish in importance, those which they are not comfortable with. Many catholics use birth control, for instance. I believe that in America, many blacks adopt islam, because they are rejecting the christianity of the society which brought their ancestors as slaves and which continued racist oppression for many decades after slavery was abolished. The fact that slavery was prevalent throughout the islamic world and was central to the trafficking of their ancestors is something which has been de-emphasised in the modern teaching of history. Jumping from the frying pan into the fire is not the best of ideas. I belief that regardless of one’s religion, or lack of, the type of society which results from the judeo-christian religious doctrines will be a society more capable of producing freedom and all of its benefits than a society based upon islam, or adherence to its tenets.
John M, I am not surprised at your individual experience of Muslims. Even in fallen humanity there is a fair bit of good-will and desire to live in peace built into us – for practical reasons if no other. Particularly among those who have moved to America, I imagine that the percentage of Muslims one wouldn’t mind living next door to is pretty high.
But the test of a group is not so much how many of its people are generally decent humans, but what they do in response to the others in their midst who are not decent. That is where we all reveal how important our virtues are to us, compared to mere tribal loyalty. That is a rule of thumb that applies to motorcyclists, scout leaders, Belgians, aromatherapists – everyone.
Cherchez le imam.
To John MacLachlan:
Yes indeed, most of my relatives are not only liberal in the classical – that is, good – sense, they sadly liberal in the post-modern, bad sense: they support and admire fools like Obama. To their credit, they don’t make excuses for Islamic barbarism, but like most P.C. liberals they are too attracted to lame-brained moral equivalency arguments vis-a-vis the Israelis and Palestinians. Their view of the world is often based on the logical fallacy that because all peoples are flawed, we must respond to them as if they were all flawed to the same degree. This is the sort of humbug a seventh-grader should be able to see through. The Israelis may be flawed, but they are basically a civilized, modern people.
The Palestinians, by contrast, are essentially barbarians, the moral equivalent of unruly children incapable of acting in a mature way. Their culture is so steeped in hatred of Jews and God knows who all else that the sheer stinking vileness of it is enough to knock a vulture off a sh*t wagon half a mile away. I have not a drop of sympathy for them, except PERHAPS a modicum of sympathy for those Palestinians who are Christians and have to find a way to co-exist with a Muslim majority.
abdul7591:
Final post on this thread. I consider that you would be suited to write an article wherein you reduced christianity and islam to their basic dogmas regarding the mandated or permitted behaviour of an adherent of each faith towards others of similar faith and towards others of differing faiths.
The theological aspects of worship are not relevant, only the behaviour of an adherent towards others on this earth.
Christianity requires acceptance of Jesus Christ, but does not diminish the rights of unbelievers. A christian must behave towards others in precisely the same way, regardless of their religion.
However, I do not believe that this is the case with islam. A muslim, I believe, is permitted or mandated to deny secular rights and freedom of religion to non-muslims, and the overt practice of this is determined solely by expediency.
To me, there is no moral equivalency and it is dangerous and dishonest to pretend that there is.
An annecdote: thirty years ago, whilst at university in Glasgow, I met an Israeli, who introduced me to his Palestinian friend. I was sceptical and thought that they were having a joke. However, the Palestinian insisted that he was a Palestinian and that the Israeli and he had been friends for a long time. They both insisted it was quite normal for jews and muslims to socialise together, when abroad. I suggested that socialising together whilst abroad and then trying to kill each other upon returning home was very strange. They told me that, as a foreigner, I would never understand, but that I should liken it to a family feud. Those are the most bitter feuds which can ever arise.
I believe that adherents of islam are perpetually in struggle with all non-believers, but that there can be no military victory.
Only by demonstrating the superiority of Christianity in promoting the type of society which, I think, most people would prefer to live in, can any lasting victory be achieved.
Predator strikes will not defeat an ideology.
Assistant Village Idiot:
It is my belief that most people are not fanatics, but will give tacit support towards the fanatics of their particular religion/ideology. Nothing succeeds like success; victory has a thousand fathers, etc.
When there is no penalty attached to indulgence of fanatics, then the penalties for opposing them are substantially greater than the rewards, thereof. That, alone promotes tacit compliance, in my opinion.
To John McLachlan:
Thanks for thinking me qualified to write an article of the kind you describe. I don’t know if I am up to that task, but a few years ago I did write an article for Ali Sina’s website Faithfreedom.org. The article deals somewhat with the subject you raised. It involved some thoughts I had when recalling an incident at my grandmother’s flat in Tehran many, many years ago.
I published it under a different pseudonym sometime in 2006, as I recall.