By Jonathan Kay, National Post
As an editor at the National Post, I often rely on three letters to protect my columnists from human-rights tribunals: I-S-M — these being the difference between spelling Islam and Islamism.
The former is a religion — like Christianity or Judaism. The latter is an ideology, which seeks to impose an intolerant fundamentalist version of Islam on all Muslims, and spread the faith throughout the world. Declaring Islamism a menace isn’t controversial. Declaring Islam a menace is considered hate speech.
Geert Wilders’ refusal to deploy those three letters is the reason that the 47-year-old Dutch politician travels with bodyguards, and cannot sleep in the same house two nights in a row. For Mr. Wilders, the problem plaguing Western societies is Islam, full stop. Terrorism, tyranny, the subjugation of women — these are not perversions of Islam, as he sees it, but rather its very essence.
“The word ‘Islamism’ suggests that there is a moderate Islam and a non-moderate Islam,” he told me during an interview in Toronto on Sunday. “And I believe that this is a distinction that doesn’t exist. It’s like the Prime Minister of Turkey [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan, said ‘There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam, and that’s it.’ This is the Islam of the Koran.”
“Now, you can certainly make a distinction among the people,” he adds. “There are moderate Muslims — who are the majority in our Western societies — and non-moderate Muslims.”
“But Islam itself has only one form. The totalitarian ideology contained in the Koran has no room for moderation. If you really look at what the Koran says, in fact, you could argue that ‘moderate’ Muslims are not Muslims at all. It tells us that if you do not act on even one verse, then you are an apostate.”
Unlike most critics of Islam, who tend to shy away from the explosive subject of Mohammed himself, Mr. Wilders forthrightly describes the Muslim Prophet as a dictator, a pedophile and a warmonger. “If you study the life of Mohammed,” Mr.Wilders told me, “you can see that he was a worse terrorist than Osama bin Laden ever was.”
It is an understatement to call Mr. Wilders a divisive figure in the Netherlands. On the one hand, he is the leader of the PVV, the country’s third most popular political party — which currently is propping up the ruling minority government. And Mr. Wilders has been declared “politician of the year” by a popular Dutch radio station, and come in second in a variety of other mainstream polls.
On the other hand, the Muslim Council of Britain has called him “an open and relentless preacher of hate.” For a time, Mr. Wilders, even was banned from entering the U.K. A popular Dutch rapper wrote a song about killing Mr. Wilders (“This is no joke. Last night I dreamed I chopped your head off.”)
Before meeting Mr. Wilders on Sunday, I knew him mostly from his most inflammatory slogans — such as his comparison of the Koran to Mein Kampf — which his detractors fling around as proof of his narrow-minded bigotry.
Yet the real Geert Wilders speaks softly and thoughtfully. It turns out that he’s travelled to dozens of Muslim nations. He knows more about the Islamic faith and what it means to ordinary people than do most of Islam’s most ardent Western defenders.
Nor do I believe that Mr. Wilders is a bigot — a least, not in the sense that the word usually is understood.
“I don’t hate Muslims. I hate their book and their ideology,” is what he told Britain’s Guardian newspaper in 2008. Mr. Wilders sees Islam as akin to communism or fascism, a cage that traps its suffering adherents in a hateful, phobic frame of mind.
Mr. Wilders describes Muslim as victims of bad ideas, in other words. In this way, his attitude is entirely different from classic anti-Semites and racists, who treat Jews and blacks as debased on the level of biology.
Of course, in the modern, politically correct Western tradition, hatred expressed toward a religion typically is held on the same level of human-rights opprobrium as hatred expressed toward a race or an ethnicity. But Islam is not really a religion at all, as Mr. Wilders sees it, but rather a retrograde political ideology with religious trappings.
He notes that while other religions draw a distinction between God and Ceasar, between the secular and the spiritual, Islam demands submission in every aspect of human existence, both through the wording of the Koran itself and the Shariah law that has developed in its shadow. The faith also supplies a justification for aggressive war; vilifies non-believers; and pronounces death upon its enemies. In short, Mr. Wilders argues, it has all the ingredients of what students of 20th century history would recognize as a fully formed totalitarian ideology.
“I see Islam as 95% ideology, 5% religion — the 5% being the temples and the imams,” he tells me. “If you would strip the Koran of all the negative, hateful, anti-Semitic material, you would wind up with a tiny [booklet].”
It’s easy to see why many Europeans casually jump to the conclusion that Mr. Wilders is a hatemonger. He wants to halt non-Western immigration to the Netherlands until existing immigrants can be integrated, and he wants to deport any foreigner who commits a crime — the same sort of policies as those advocated by genuine xenophobes.
But even so, his insistence on the proper distinction between faith and ideology is an idea that deserves to be taken seriously. For it invites the question: If we permit the excoriation of totalitarian cults created by modern dictators, why do we stigmatize (and even criminalize) the excoriation of arguably similar notions when they happen to be attributed to a 7th-century Bedouin with supernatural visions?
It’s a good question. And as far as I know, Geert Wilders is the only Western politician taking it seriously.
This is misleading. There were a dozen or more different sovereignties over that thousand years, by a multiplicity of peoples and states. It’s true that they were all Islamic in makeup and/or administration, but the kind of bond of which you speak is never religiously based. Europe had a multiplicity of ‘Christian’ sovereignties for hundreds of years, but to speak of a religiously-based bond is a real stretch.
Does “loving the land” explain how its ecology was utterly destroyed (such that less than a tenth of it was even under cultivation by 1895) and left in ruins until the late 1800’s?
The soil had to be actually rebuilt, in order to be planted for crops.
Here are a couple of passages of “naked” scripture from the Koran and Muhammad. Please tell us what else is needed in order to understand them.
— Surely the vilest of animals in Allah’s sight are those who disbelieve. (8.55)
— We will put terror into the hearts of the unbelievers. (3:151)
— Make war on them until idolatry shall cease and God’s religion shall reign supreme. (8:40)
— I shall cast terror into the hearts of the infidels. Strike off their heads, strike off the very tips of their fingers. (8:12)
— Mohammed said, “I have been ordered to fight with the people till they say, “None has the right to be worshipped but Allah, and whoever says, ” None has the right to be worshipped but Allah , his life and property will be saved by me.”
— Mohammed said, “Whoever changes his Islamic religion, kill him.”
— Muhammad said: “Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war, …”
Regrettably, another bit of mythology.
You are betrayed by your reliance on this narrative, Safiyya. The truth is less sanguine. At the risk of being tiresome, I quote myself from another thread on this site:
Two years after the Battle of the Yarmuk River [AD 636], which, in a general way, ended Byzantine rule south of the Anatolian Peninsula, the Muslim armies arrived on the doorstep of Jerusalem.
The actual deal between Khalif Umar bin al-Khattab & the Patriarch Sophronius — by which the Byzantines gave up the city of Jerusalem without a fight — included a provision that the new Islamic authority would CONTINUE the existing policy of keeping Jerusalem off-limits to Jews. (Any later, occasional relaxing of the rules was about just that — administrative laxity; nothing more.)
To which I will add here that in a very real way, the exiling of the Jews from the Land of Israel — far from being ‘ended’ by the then newly-Muslim Arabs — was in fact COMPLETED by them.
Unlike earlier occupiers, the (contemporaneously named) “Ishmaelite conquerors,” or sarakenoi [hence, “Saracens”], promptly set about systematically colonizing the Jewish homeland militarily. Wave after wave of Ishmaelite warrior adherents of the Prophet -— together with their sprawling and swiftly proliferating, four-wife (& limitlessly concubinous) families -— followed the victors of the Yarmuk, and proceeded to pillage the countryside and smother the land like a pestilence.
Half of all homes in the cities of Tiberias & Beit She’an were expropropriated -— confiscated & given to the Islamic battalions for armed settlement, without compensation (let alone, consent) of the owners. The new Arab government went even so far as to deliberately separate the Jews from their native soil.
The dispossession, progressive marginalization & displacement of Palestine’s non-sovereign, and thus exceedingly vulnerable, Jewish community, was a prolonged affair, and over time became an accomplished fact through the routine seizure of Jewish land & dwellings, and the conscription of Jewish labor.
These were facilitated by implementation of the Pact of Omar and the Twelve Laws of Dhimmi — whose application to Jews in particular made by comparison the anti-Black, Jim Crow laws of post-Reconstuction America to appear (and without presuming to discount the anxiety & torment of their victims) -— like a library society garden party, complete with Brie, Chardonnay, petits fours & a string quartet…
I could say more, but I think you know where I’m going. This will do for now.
Calvary, it wasn’t a mill here and a mill there. It was 80-100 million on the sub-continent. Probably the greatest human slaughter in history.
I hear that all the time from certain traditionalist branches of both Judaism & Christianity. I will freely grant you (and them) that something more is needed for understanding the scripture than the naked words of the scripture itself — but it’s a great leap to go from that to the proposition that yet MORE verbiage (and the verbiage, now, moreover, of finite men who don’t even presume to call their own words divine) will fill that bill.
If you see no danger in reliance on the Hadiths or the commentaries & responsa of the Imams, I surely can’t make you see it.
Right you are Abdulameer. She doesn’t seem to want us to peer under the surface. (Same thing on another thread.) Better to just ignore our honest questions.
She seems to prefer arguing from the perspective of international law – which just means if her cohorts can gain control of the UN (or world opinion), they will just write laws that suit their needs.
Maybe I’m reading more into than she intended…still I found this statement absolutely hilarious:
Yeah, no kidding!! I bet it’s not a problem for you!! Muslims didn’t have a problem killing and subjugating Arabs – the first and to this day the most victimized group – under their new religion. Neither did they have a problem doing the same with neighboring Jews and Christians.
The Persians and Hindus weren’t initially keen on being conquered. But, no matter! It was for their own good. You can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs right? A milling dead here…a million dead there. That was never the real problem, she says. Priceless.
If Saffiya wants us to believe that those verses from the Koran are quoted out of context, then let Saffiya take some of those verses and prove to us that they really don’t mean what they say. Let her give us the context which makes those verses mean the opposite of what they so obviously appear to mean,
Safiyya, the words in the Koran mean things. They instruct people. We as non-Muslims may not have your secret decoder ring to decipher what you call the ‘correct’ interpretation of specific verses. But what we do have is the actions, attitudes and behavior of millions of Muslims that demonstrate to us what the words mean to them. And, frankly, it’s not pretty.
The Bible (which to me is the Tanakh and New Testament) defines God as love. The rest of the world is just not seeing love in the actions of Muslims throughout the world. Instead of loving the ‘other’, you are at war with us.
In any case, I admire your courage to speak up here, knowing it will be tough sailing. If you stick around, we’ll have interesting conversations to be sure!
Saffiya, you are so uptight about non-Moslems telling you what Islam is all about and what the verses of the Koran mean. Did you ever protest when George Bush and Obama continually tell us that Islam is a religion of peace and that Bin Laden and other Moslem terrorists misunderstand and pervert Islam?
As for telling you what the verses of the Koran mean, there is no need to do that. Anybody can see the verses of the Koran and understand what they mean. For example, here are a few that I will just reproduce here without any comment or interpretation because they are pretty obvious. If you think they mean something other than what they so obviously appear to mean, please explain how you come to that conclusion.
ATTITUDE TOWARDS NON-MOSLEMS
— The unbelievers among the people of the book and the pagans shall burn forever in the fire of Hell. They are the vilest of all creatures. (98.6).
— Surely the vilest of animals in Allah’s sight are those who disbelieve. (8.55)
— The unbelievers are your inveterate enemy. (4:101)
— Mohammed is God’s apostle. Those who follow him are ruthless to the unbelievers but merciful to one another. (48:29).
— It is unlawful for a believer to kill another believer, accidents excepted. (4:92)
— Those who speak ill of God and his Apostle shall be cursed by God in this life and in the life to come. (33:57)
— Believers, take neither the Jews nor the Christians for your friends. (5:51)
WAR ON NON-MOSLEMS
— Make war on them until idolatry shall cease and God’s religion shall reign supreme. (8:40)
— Fight against them until idolatry is no more and God’s religion reigns supreme. (2:193)
— The true believers fight for the cause of God, but the infidels fight for the devil. 14 — Fight then against the friends of Satan. (4:76)
— We will put terror into the hearts of the unbelievers. (3:151)
— I shall cast terror into the hearts of the infidels. Strike off their heads, strike off the very tips of their fingers. (8:12)
— Fight for the sake of God those that fight against you, but do not attack them first. God does not love aggressors. Slay them wherever you find them. Drive them out of the places from which they drove you. Idolatry is more grievous than bloodshed. (2:190-191)
— When the sacred months are over, slay the idolaters wherever you find them. (9:5)
— Fight against such of those to whom the Scriptures were given as believe in neither God nor the Last Day, … until they pay tribute out of hand and are utterly subdued. (9:29)
— Prophet, make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal rigorously with them. (9:73 and 66:9)
— Believers, make war on the infidels who dwell around you. Deal firmly with them. (9:123)
— When you meet the unbelievers in the battlefield, strike off their heads. (47:4)
— A prophet may not take captives until he has fought and triumphed in the land. (8:67)
— Behold, God has bought of the believers their lives and their possessions, promising them Paradise in return, and so they fight in God’s cause, and slay and are slain. (9:111)
— The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter; except for those who repent before they fall into your power: in that case, know that Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful. (5-33-34)
Calvary
You are not a Muslim, and your explanations about the verses in the Quran means zilch. One has to ponder the arrogance of you and other non Muslims here, telling me what the verses of the Quran mean.
Safiyya,
God’s direction for Jews to take Israel by force was not a ‘law’ of the Torah. Jews were not commanded to subdue the whole world by force, only to establish a beach-head, if you will, for God’s people in a pagan world. It was indeed a command limited in both time and space.
Nor are Christians called to conquer the world by force.
Taking the world by force – unlimited in time and space – is an invention of Mohamed. No other religion I know of calls for this. This is an example of the Koran, as it often does, corrupting and misapplying principles in both the Tanakh and the New Testament for the perceived advantage of its believers.
“The matter is not substantive, because Theo Van Gogh’s murder is not the suject here. Andrew is merely clutching at straws and will try to use that to divert from the real issues…”
Thank you for answering my question. Us lawyers would call that an admission.
Islamic dominion as you call it was never really the problem. It’s not like we don’t recognise a Jewish connection to the land, and we did end Jewish exile when we took the land from the Byzantines, and as the Khilafa recognised from the beginning.
Don’t blame us for loving the land and wanting to hold soverignty over it. Over one thousand years of sovereignty is a long time to form a bond . It’s not like it’s not sacred to us too. Nobody gives away a piece of their body happily even if it is diseased. Do you think we’d just give it up easily as if we didn’t care?
Dweller
this is your own understanding as a Jew, and you believe in it, plus, you’re applying a context to the verses. What I said, was from Wilder perspective (an atheist paid to propogandise Islamophobia), which can apply to any religion especially the Old Testament as he calls it.
Geert Wilders did not cite the Muslim belief of the verses. Every verse has explanations to it, when and how to put it into practice for example. You cannot understand the Quran without either the Oral tradition of the Prophet (Hadith’s) or if you are Shia, without an Imam’s commentary or ruling.
Whilders is not a scholar nor is he qualified to speak about Islam. He did not put the verses of the Quran he uses into context. You cannot do that without the Sunnah (The Hadith) which is the Quranic explanatory of the verses as understood by Sunni Islam. The Shia have their imam’s but even they use the traditions of their early imam’s which do not contradict the most important basics of the faith.
This is just plain demonising. He interprets a verse as he sees it, and then says this is what Muslims believe. How many Muslim children go to Geert Wilders, Robert Spencer, Andrew Bostom and other paid Islamophobia propogandising whores for lessons in Islam?
Forgive me.
I suspected that you might be a woman [“Safiyya” a variation of “Sophia,” perhaps?] — but without knowing for certain, it seemed to me not improper to simply adhere to the “default position” in such matters, which is the assumption that the correspondent is masculine; no offense intended.
If you are intimating a genuinely parallel situation, are you suggesting that “the Quran’s orders to kill,” then, came directly & expressly from the Almighty? If so, could I prevail upon you to cite for me the pertinent Suras & Ayyas?
If I’m understanding you, you are actually mixing two different kinds of ‘commandments.’
There is a distinction to be made between, say, a general prohibition against stealing, murder, adultery, deliberate slander, etc.
— and a specific command, given at a particular time & place, to a particular party or parties, to carry out an expressly required act.
Nothing, it is true, will justify the violation of the former “commandments.”
The latter order, however, must be viewed in context — and if there is no subsequent order of the same sort, then it is/was indeed a “one-time commandment.”
It would appear that the general thread was related to, among other things, the demonstrated behavior of Islam’s purported adherents in a Western country.
While successive posts will often lead matters far afield from their points of origin, it seems not especially unreasonable to respond to such questions as the one Andrew posed (and then returning, if you like, to the point of departure before proceeding) — particularly in light of the opportunity it affords you to establish a baseline & a perspective on what might otherwise be misconstrued in your posts.
One man’s opinion, of course.
@ Safiyya 9:22
I’m sorry but you really don’t understand the Netherlands or the Dutch. You mention Job Cohen. Do you have any idea how unpopular Cohen is? He was the mayor of Amsterdam, but he did a terrible job. When Theo van Gogh was murdered the first thing he did was visit the family of the murderer. His crime policy was one of the worst we’ve ever seen. Later he became the leader of the labor party. In the media he was portrayed as the next big leader, but the labor party lost big time and they keep losing votes.
“The Dutch do not support his Jordan is Palestine and “Israel is the first line of defence against the west” nonsense”
Again, you don’t seem to know the Dutch that well. More and more people support Israel these days and see Palestinians as frauds (although the main stream media don’t seem to notice this). And the USA is not seen as a threat, although the greens and labor would like you to believe that the USA is a threat. More over you don’t seem to understand how the MSM in the Netherlands works. We have Public Television and a few commercial tv-stations. The public channels have several divisions because of our past (protestant, catholic, etc), but most of them are ruled by members of the Labour Party. The party of Wilders is still very popular and the people from labor do not want to understand this. They don’t seem to understand how this happened in the first place (it’s mainly because they refused to talk about controversial subjects as immigration). They do everything in their power to smear him and his party. I don’t vote for his party (actually I don’t vote at all) but you don’t understand the Netherlands and how things work around here. Your statements are false and based on absolutely nothing.
Greetings from the Netherlands,
Sophie
Safiyya, I mis-spoke. International law does recognize Israel’s sovereign right to J & S. It is bound up in the 1921 San Remo Agreement, signed onto by the leading Western powers that granted to Jews the right to all of the British Palestinian mandate, which actually included the land of Jordan. That agreement was given the validity of law by the then League of Nations and the UN, successor to the League adopted all resolutions, laws and the like of the League without reservation or qualification.
Contrary to San Remo Agreement it signed onto and international law at the time, the British seeing its interests lay with Arabs and not Jews, proceeded to gut 70% of the Palestinian mandatory lands designated for the Jews for their own national homeland and state to the Hashemites.
The British again during WWII, in contravention of international law it had earlier recognized to do all it could to enable Jewish immigration to the Palestinian mandatory land, again for political reasons of self interest, did all it could to prevent Jews fleeing the Holocaust to find refuge in the mandated lands. Not only that, the British, again due to their own anti-semitism and efforts to advance their own interests through the Arabs totally consumed by Jew hatred and their working with Hitler and the Nazis to lead the genocide of the Jews in the mandated territories, enabled the Arabs to arm themselves in their pogroms against the Jews in the mandated territory and acted to prevent Jews from arming to defend themselves.
That the West supports a 2 state solution is not a matter of international law, but rather the West’s rationalization to flout international law for the sake of advancing their own interests, which in this case just happens to be at the Jews’ and Israel’s expense. That is what accounts for current Western interpretations of UNSCR 242 which are all sophisticated rationalizations to justify their own self interest, but that has nothing to do with international law.
The Arab oil producers have leverage on the West and have successfully used that leverage to get the West to appease Arab hatred of Jews and since 1948, also Israel as much as Western stomachs can bear.
To conclude if you want to speak of international law, the only international law that has risen to be a law as opposed to a popularly held opinion of not the law as it is, but the law that popular opinion wants it to be, is to be found in the San Remo Agreement, the orginal text, purpose and spirit of the British mandated territories and the League of Nations adopting that all that into law, which the U.N. as earlier pointed out, adopted as the successor international body to the League of Nations.
Safiffa, my efforts to get you to abandon name calling and labeling and instead provide a reasoned opinion are beginning to resonate with you. Good.
Re: a two state solution – that is not within the ambit of international law, but rather it is within the ambit of world opinion that steadfastly pushes to make a 2 state solution a matter of international law that would require a Part VII UNSC Resolution to so declare such ultimate goal, if achieved, a matter of law.
The 2 state solution found general acceptance in the UNGA partition resolution in Nov./1947. The Arabs rejected it and started a genocidal war against the Jews immediately on Israel declaring herself a state.
The closest the world has come to making the 2 state solution a matter of law is UNSCR 242 made under the recommending part of the UN Charter, being Section VI. That resolution is a recommendation for dispute resolution between Israel on the one hand and all the other warring Arab nations, through negotiations as opposed to war.
UNSCR 242 calls for a negotiated peace agreement between Israel and her Arab enemies that would see Israel go out of occupation of territories captured in 1967, but not necessarily all territories which action by Israel would be concurrent with the coming into existence of a peace agreement that recognized Israel’s lawful boundaries. The Arab nations as you well know have not met their obligations to negotiate. The famous Arab League September 1967 meeting in Khartoum that declared the three no’s marks Arab/Palestinian thinking today as much as it did then.
Palestinian style negotiations have been marked by intransigent demands and claimed, but disputed rights. Holding fast to maximum positions is not negotiating as we in the West understand that concept. No overall peace agreement with all Arab nations that includes Israel’s borders being accepted and recognized, has come into being.
The world in demanding a 2 state solution and an Israeli pull out from Judea and Samaria before and without any overall peace agreement between Israel and her Arab and Palestinian neighbors is a rejection of the substance and spirit of UNSCR 242.
Since Israel and the Arabs/Palestinians have been unable to advance towards a peace solution as contemplated and particularized in the recommendations of UNSCR 242, the world through the U.N. is not yet in any position to legalize the idea of a 2 state solution in a UNSCR Part VII Resolution.
As for your suggestion that Israel is expanding her territory, that is not correct. Jews held the region as their sovereign territory thousands of years ago. They lost sovereignty due to conquest by the Romans and thereafter by Muslims. In the 1948 war, Israel lost de facto control and sovereignty to Jerusalem to the Jordanians. That de facto control and sovereignty was regained by conquest in 1967.
You make your case on the assumption that J & S are Arab/Palestinian lands. You make that assumption on yet a deeper assumption that since these lands were until the close of WWI under the Ottoman Empire and thus Muslim/Islamic sovereignty, that Islamic dominion and entitlement to those lands won through Islamic conquest gave Muslims/Arabs/Palestinians a superior right in perpetuity to ownernship and entitlement to dominion over those lands.
I disagree with your underlying assumptions. If one looks solely to historical precedent that conquest yields the victor property and sovereignty rights, then Arabs/Palestinians/Muslims lost their rights by conquest when those lands were liberated from their dominion and ultimately in 1967, Israel was the successor of rights of conquest in 1967.
The Arabs/Palestinians understandably want those lands back, but the fact is that they have no legal right to them and will not unless those territories, or a portion thereof are ceded to them by Israel in the context of an overall peace agreement that sees Israel’s existence and borders recognized by the Arabs and Palestinians.
Even with such agreement coming into being, unless a UNSCR is passed under Section VII, such agreement per se will not have the force of international law, but will be considered and dealt with by whatever international laws govern treaties between nations.
I did not post anything here – someone has hijacked my account into IsraPundit. TED – please pay attention to this and delete any posts from me other than the ones asking you to delete posts from me.
rongrand
Lowri wasn’t defending me as i am not the BBC. And I guess you do not know the difference between attacking and fighting back?
Please clear the fog from your eyes, next time you step out of your shtetl to type out a few messages on the way to collecting your welfare check.
Ronongrad
even if every Jew in America (80% don’t) opposed the creation of a Palestine, I promise you the US will support a Palestine coming into being. You can pretend otherwise, or call them self hating, and non Jews anti semities, but you only serve to discredit yourself, and further lend credence to the “far right Zionist kook”.
Narvey
I didn’t say that did I Narvey? You can support Israel within the boundaries that are acceptable in international law. Namely, the two state solution. The guys who were exposed as being the funders of Wilders are extremists, whose version of Zionism is not supported by international law. They support the expansion of territory and expelling natives even other Jews who do not subscribe to their extremism. But their grandest hypocricy is that they invoke the Torah to support their view, they play the role of God, and they do not call for world Jews to be forcibly repatriated which means they are hypocritical as well as being immoral. Another hypocricy, is that whilst they lament Hamas and Hezbollah and other’s who refuse to recognise their right to exist, they do the same themselves, thus have zero crediblity. Both deny the others right to a state.
Lori, I am surprised by your inability to read between the lines. I guess I credited you with abilities you do not possess. Of course I expressed my opinion of the BBC. I take it you agree with Safiyya that the BBC is the journalistic gold standard. You are as wrong as Safiyya, but then again you have the right to be wrong and the right to stick with being wrong, n’est pas?
Your “informants” can’t know much since my field was not family law or parking tickets. Interesting choice of words though to refer to your sources of information about me as “informants”. Deliberate, which suggests something nefarious or just your effort to dramatize your insulting me?
Like I care what you and your “informants” think of me. Its just noise!
Lori, that’s a low blow.
Your quick to come to the defense of Safiyya, a person you don’t know (or do you?) who has been attacking everyone in sight.
You should continue to concentrate on your Z-Street activities one of which should be converting liberal American Jews who supported this incompetent president whom I believe is an anti-Semite, getting them to support Israel. As most Jewish regular participants here on Israpundit refer to them as self-hating Jews.
As I often relate to Caroline Glick (my favorite) “If you are Jewish, regardless where you reside in the world you are connected to Israel by heritage, faith and by G-d”.
Be sure to let them know Obama will travel to Israel for one purpose, he is campaigning for the Jewish vote.
Forget it, he is not a friend of Israel and he cannot be trusted.
Bill you have this character right on.
Bill, he isn’t interested in having a serious and honest discussion.
His only interest is to spread anti-Semitic garbage.
Safiyya, your definition of a “far right Zionist kook” is one who supports Israel which you claim is neither recognized nor accepted by international law. In essence, your view is that Israel has no legitimacy and thus anyone who supports Israel’s existence and her stance against the Palestinian/Arab/Muslim anti-Israel view, is a “far right Zionist kook”.
To characterize all supporters of Israel as being “right wing Zionist kooks, reveals you are one of those many bigoted anti-Israel/anti-semitic kooks that hold fast to propaganda lies about Jews and Israel that fly in the face of reason and facts.
One of those lies is built around the fact of an opinion poll survey last year, that you allude to, that showed Israel is seen by many Europeans as a world threat. While the reality of that opinion is a fact, it is a quantum leap to contend that this opinion is reasonable, warranted and fact based. You make that leap, however.
You claimed in another thread about possessing superior knowledge of Mid East history. Now you claim superior knowledge of international law.
Either that knowledge you boast having, you actually don’t have or if you do have it, you are denying and ignoring it in order to hold fast to your disingenous or outright dishonest views that are obviously supportive of the many anti-Israel perceptions and opinions heard ad nauseum from most Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims and all Jew/Israel haters.
No wonder it is impossible to engage in a serious, honest, informed and reasoned discussion with you.
Dweller,
I appreciate your putting Andrew in his place. Thank you 🙂
However I disagree with your premise:-
The matter is not substantive, because Theo Van Gogh’s murder is not the suject here. Andrew is merely clutching at straws and will try to use that to divert from the real issues and i’m not a “him”
Dweller,
This is another thing that makes the likes of Wilders and other Islamophobes have zero credence.
If Moses was commanded by his god, why does Wilders have a problem with his interpreting the Quran’s orders to kill as being particulasry heinous? Aside from the fact, that everything that he criticises in the Quran is even worse, in the old testament (as it’s known in the west) or is far worse, baby killing for example,
The line that they use, is that those were one time commandments as if that excuses anything or changes anything even if it were true, which it’s not. The Torah is not a one time commandment. The laws are binding for all time. It’s only the Christians that consider the Torah laws as being not necessary to follow, not others, Jews for example.
Or to put it another way, the atheist Wilders, ignores the even worse genocidal commands in other books and selectively campaigns against one. If he were campaigning against ALL religious books, because their gods sanction genocide, well then that would be understandable, but to single out one, is sheer opportunism.
Narvey
Supporting that which is not recognised nor accepted in international law, including by the way, ISRAEL makes them “far right zionist kooks”.
I cannot believe you’re asking me this, Narvey! You mean to tell me, you see nothing in far right Zionists funding a EU politician to spew their line? Why are they not funding Job Cohen (ironically, he took the wind out his Wilders sails) for example. The Dutch do not support his Jordan is Palestine and “Israel is the first line of defence against the west” nonsense. Most Europeans including the DUtch see Israel as a world threat, along with the USA, NKorea, Iran. THAT is why the far right zionist kooks are funding him. Not for the welfare of the Dutch.
Moses passed on the order from GOD.
It wasn’t his own ‘order.’
Hell, yes, I’m for real.
Look, Andrew, this is a practical consideration. You asked Saffiyya [#5, if that’s still the no.] to tell you “honestly” whether he thought Theo Van Gogh deserved having his throat cut for making his film about Islamic treatment of women.
If what you really want is a straightforward answer to that question
rather than an excuse to get in another dig,
then the logical thing to do is to stick to the question — without cluttering it up with distractions (and with further, & equally irrelevant, temptations to dig back at you)
like “your fellow pagan moon cult worshipers.”
Don’t you see?– the side digs just let him off the hook in the substantive matter you asked about.
Muslim religious authorities also refer to Islam as an ideology and say that Islam is NOT a religion like other religions. The fear is that Islam is not just another religion like Christianity or Buddhism or whatever. These fears are well-founded because Islam is NOT a religion like other religions; and Islamic scholars are the first ones to say so. For example, Yusuf Qaradawi (the most influential Muslim cleric in the world today, the spiritual head of the Muslim Brotherhood who is admired by Imam Rauf) said: “Islam is not a religion in the common, distorted meaning of the word, confining its scope only to the private life of man. By saying that it is a complete way of life, we mean that it caters for all the fields of human existence. In fact, Islam provides guidance for all walks of life — individual and social, material and moral, economic and political, legal and cultural, national and international.”
This “complete way of life” is the Sharia sacred Islamic law which calls for the legal subordination of non-Moslems to Moslems and of women to men; it requires death for homosexuals, apostates and blasphemers. And, it calls for eternal war (jihad) against non-Moslems until Islamic law dominates throughout the world. These doctrines all come from the Koran and the sayings of Muhammad which are preached and taught in every mosque in the world. People need to understand why Islam is unique and not like other religions. Then they would know that mosques are not like churches because mosques are centers for the propagation of sharia law. If Islam is not like other religions, it should not be treated like other religions. If mosques are not like churches and other houses of prayer, then mosques should not be treated like other houses of prayer. Mosques are centers for the propagation of Islamic supremacist ideology, and they should be treated like other centers for the propagation of supremacist, violent and imperialist ideology, such as the Communist Party or the Nazi Party. This is not religious bigotry; it is ideological self-defense.
Safiyya, BBC is not credible. Find a credible source and we can talk. What’s with the expression, “far right Zionist kooks”? Exactly what makes a Zionist far right and what makes them a kook? Even if some Zionists have provided funding to Wilders, how does that even begin to lay a foundation for a conspiracy?
No one makes any case, let alone a credible one out of name calling and labeling. I figure you should know that, so why do you persist in such advocacy?
I am fully prepared to discuss or debate issues with you, but as I said, first make a cogent case for your views on whatever subject you choose.
Narvey,
I’ve not one to hand regarding him saying it, but i’ll find one. But even if he had not said that, that is not what damns him, as one could dismiss it as just bragging or false bravado or something. The BBC documentary details his main funders, who are far right Zionists. Non dutch. That is not a conspiracy. Pro Israel is one thing, but being funded by far right Zionist kooks is not a conspiracy. It is a FACT.
Safiyya, you have disagreed in a disagreeable way with a number of contributors’ views, but have failed to actually make a contrary case. You have been given back what you gave.
All I was asking was that you do make out a cogent case for any particular view you have that bears on a subject at hand and with which you have an contrary opinion to some other contributor.
There is far too much emotive shouting matches and name calling for my taste. It is neither productive nor informative. You are not however, the only one that so engages in that kind of back and forth.
You have asked me for my rebuttal. Frankly you have not provided much, if anything to rebut.
You say that the BBC is the gold standard. BBC earned that title years ago and it may still be deserved when it reports and analyzes less emotionally charged issues. When it comes to BBC’s reporting and analysis involving Israel vs. the Palestinians, the Arabs or Muslims, it is fair to say that the BBC has set the alchemist’s dream on its head for it has turned its gold standard into lead.
As for Al Jazeera, if you are speaking of its reporting and analysis of Muslim vs. Muslim issues, perhaps it is the gold standard for the Muslim world. Where it however, reports and analyzes issues involving Israel vs. the Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims, it is fair to say that Al Jazeera operates by a fool’s gold standard.
If you have a source for a direct quote from Wilders where he states he is an Israeli/Jewish agent, I would be most interested in seeing that. I frankly doubt there is anything you can come up with, other than perhaps saying he is pro-Israel. That hardly proves he is an agent provocateur or propagandist for Jews and Israelis.
Anyway Safiyya, let me see your proof regarding Wilders being a Jewish/Israel agent.
Narvey,
I am not ducking your challenge. Why do you want to know my personal beliefs anyway? We’re all anonymous here. If I recall, your questions were off topic anyway, this is not a “learn about Islam” forum. The BBC is the gold standard of media, Al Jazeera too. It is unacceptable to call either one of them “anti Israel” unless there is a deliberate attempt to malign and lie. Now you’re being judgmental yourself.
Narvey, Wilders himself said those things. I hardly posted a conspiracy. If you thik the BBC documentary is inaccurate or a “conspiracy”, I look forward to reading your rebuttal.
It isn’t Muslims, it’s the infidels who make a distinction between Islam and Islamism. They know nothing about the Qur’an, the Hadith, and the Sira. They don’t want to know. It’s too frightening. If Islam had a following of one million it would be proscribed in every nation, like the Jones’ cult. With one and a half billion followers, non-Muslims mind their manners. Think about it. If only one per cent become activist you have enemies of 15 million.
My advice. Stick with picking on the Jews. There’s only 13 million. Hitler was right. No one will care.
Safiyyah, I have challenged you to make a case for whatever views you have based on historical and current facts. You continue to duck that challenge. Now, relying on the opinions of an anti-Wilders Dutch TV station and the notoriously anti-Israel BBC, you offer up a conspiracy theory that Wilders is an Israeli/Jewish agent who has been made the front man in a Jewish/Israel effort to denounce Islam.
You continue to blow hot air that is becoming rancid and malodorous.
I put to you again, if you have a case to make on any of the issues you have been reacting to or you wish to make the case that Islam is a religion of peace, an idea that Islamofacists are doing their level best to dispel, make it by citing history, facts, law and Islamic doctrine that supports your view.
Hey Dweller, another massacre of the Copts in Egypt, and you want me to consider the “mood” of our “correspondent”. Are you for real?
OK Safiyya, I’ll bite. I call for all Jews to be repatriated to Israel (Please G-d, now). Nothing new here – we pray for it 3 times a day. Next request?
What do you mean by “exclusively Jewish”? — off-limits to anybody else?
Israel IS a constitutionally a Jewish state.
It was conceived to be that, and has always been. But it is not forbidden to other people to live in the Jewish state, or even be citizens of it.
If self-styled “Palestinians” want to exercise sovereignty, Jordan is the obvious place for that to happen — as it is already [by law, by demography, and by (misbegotten) history] a Palestinian Arab state in what formerly constituted “Eastern Palestine.”
C’mon Andrew, how can you hope to get an HONEST answer out of our correspondent if you load the question with obviously judgmental, insulting (and topically distracting) conclusions on the order of “your fellow pagan moon cult worshipers”? (Whether or not you believe the characterization justified, you simply can’t reasonably expect it to leave the responder in a mood to give a straightforward, nondefensive answer.)
Dear Saffiyah, One of Wilders fellow dutchmen, had his throat cut in broad daylight in Amsterdam for the “crime” of making a film about how Islam treats women by one one of your fellow pagan moon cult worshipers.
Tell me honestly whether you think he deserved it or not?
Please enuff of the righteous indignation. The following item has taken the network news programs by storm.
WE ARE NO BETTER. SEE WHAT OUR VERY PIOUS ARE DOING!!!
http://gothamist.com/2011/05/09/hasidic_paper_photoshops_seductive.php
Very selective reporting.
Why no mention of the penniless part Indonesian (like Obama) Geert Wilders’ 42 trips to Israel? Or his self professed claim “I am a Mossad man” No mention either of the reports that Dutch intelligence suspect him of being an Israeli agent and monitor him. No mention of the Zionist extreme right wing who are his most active promoters, more so than the Dutch.
Wilders and Israel
Dutch public TV channel Nederland 2’s daily news programme Netwerk reported that numerous American supporters of Israel financially supported Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV) and openly approved of his message towards Islam and Islamic terrorism.[92] Wilders told an audience during the report that “We [in the West] are all Israel”.[92] He has also said “Israel is the West’s first line of defence” against what he perceives to be a threat posed by Islam.[93]
Following the Dutch general election, 2010, in which the PVV were the third biggest party, Wilders said Jordan should be renamed Palestine.[94] The Jordanian government responded saying Wilders’ speech was reminiscent of the Israeli right wing.
Enquiring minds would like to know:-
Who funded his 42 trips to Israel and why?
The BBC documentary Geert Wilders: Europe’s Most Dangerous Man? sheds some light on his funders and supporters and they all have one thing in common (ultra right Zionist extremism which neither Holland, nor the USA nor even Israel as a state support), which definately is not a concern for the welfare of the Dutch.
About his connection to Israel, the BBC notes that he lived in what is described as “one of the most extremist settlements in Israel”
Other highlights show “Robert” of the Jewish Task Force, (whose founder Chaim ben Pesach is a convicted terrorist) singing his praises, how Daniel Pipes, of the Middle East Forum, paid a six figure sum to Wilders for his legal fees. It also details that the costs for all operations in Wilders party, are nearly all from “foreign funding”. He proposes that Israel should be an exclusively Jewish state and that the Palestinians should relocate to Jordan – a solution which is described by the presenter as a “radical concept, that doesn’t receive much mainstream support.”
Why do people who call for an exclusively Jewish state, not also call for Jews worldwide to be repatriated to Israel at the same time? but that is not relevant here, but worth mentioning because there neveris an answer when you ask
Moses told the Jews’ ancestors to slaughter all the inhabitants of the land — man, woman and child. They didn’t do it, so the Arabs came and coerced those inhabitants into becoming Moslems. Moses’ command still stands. It’s not hate speech, because he didn’t command that those people be hated; just that they be killed. The Pals are the only ones Moses commanded to kill: He exempted the Egyptians, Bedouins, Turks, Iraqis, etc. I don’t think Quran encourages “hate” speech, either, nor does is command Moslems to kill Christians and Jews per se. It merely commands that all Christians, Jews and Moslems who are deemed heretics, to be conquered and ruled over — and SOMETIMES killed. Is this “religion”? Yes, I think it is. Is it a political movement? Much more so. Should the Dutch outlaw it? THAT’S COMPLETELY UP TO THEM. It could be, that the Dutch prefer Islam to Christianity. If they don’t, they should vote for people like Geert Wilders. As for the courts, I’m beginning to think of judges and ravenous beasts as one and the same. Some day, they will meet the REAL Judge, and we will see justice.
Just as surely as the root of the word “Islamism” is “Islam”, so the root of “Islamism” is Islam. And just as surely as the root of Islam is Mohammed and the Qur’an, so the root of Islamism is Mohammed and the Qur’an. Those Muslims who have bluffed themselves that this is not the case are now bluffing you.