Sunday, March 6, 2011
Andrew Breitbart’s, Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World!
And from Andrew at Big Government:
I can think of no better way to upset the lefties in your life – and please the inner you – than pre-ordering my forthcoming coming-of-rage® book, Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World. Learn how I went from left to right, then decided to take on the world and become an unexpected culture warrior.
Available for pre-order, at Amazon.
the conservative war on muslims continues – with a new book by Andy McCarthy with a thoroughly unoriginal title is just the latest salvo.
for some inexplicable reason I am actually in the comment thread at RedState trying to convince people there that Im not their enemy. Its going about as well as you’d expect.
do you know what im secretly trying to do, my habibi?
heh….im trying to motie-engineer TAS into Culture 11. 
shhhhhh don’t tell anyone.
I just want to tell you how much I love your references. 
awww
shukran, mirelle.
scifi tagging is a big part of geek culture…it lets me express a whole meme complex in a single tag, and signifies my geek princess chops, and my membership in the wider geek community.
<3
McCarthy; what an appropriate name.
wallah, those slines really want to eat your liver.
the density of islamophobic tropes and anti-factual JAFI idiocy on that thread is amazing.
i think that is the true reason NRO can’t have comments.
the superdensity of the stupidity ratio of islamophobic comments would cause the creation of an intellectual collapsar, and the ensuing black hole would suck the entire wingnut/teatard portion of the blogverse into its exponential schwarzschild radius.
hmmm…that might be a good thing.
<3
I seriously ended reading those comments with a need for a walk to cool off. They tell you what you believe and ignore your responses; they tell you what Islam is while spouting an idiotic mishmash of the worse offenses made by so-called Islamists; then they refuse to listen to you because “your religion requires you to lie”. Also if I hear the word “dawa” (*sic) one more time I’mma punch someone. They think being a Muslim means being a member of a Special Forces-trained detachment of spies and saboteurs, that being Muslim turns a human being into a psychopath who freely lies, cheats and steals under a program laid out in detail in the “Koran” (sic). AND NO MATTER WHAT YOU SAY, THEY JUST REPEAT BACK THE SAME QUESTION AND CLAIM YOU DIDN’T ANSWER IT.
an excellent summary of my past 7 years of blogging, PPU
I’ve come not to expect anything more from the hordes of internet warriors. But when these ridiculous lines are repeated to my face by real-life, seemingly intelligent acquaintances, that I otherwise like and respect, well…nothing ever quite prepares me for that. Ouch.
It still surprises me, although it shouldn’t, that people find out I’m Muslim and ask me if I hate them or want to kill them.
I would remind you I’m a transsexual lesbian woman who does not veil and is an Ismaili Shi’a whose besties include Jewish exes, Christian lovers, Muslim compadres and comadres and various other sundry heretics, zindiqs, atheists and ghulaat.
Yet still I get the question: do you hate me? Do you want to kill me?
A thousand times, no! … if you are cute, I might even take your number.
analogies: conservatism is shari’a; liberalism is ijtihad.
Aziz, interesting post.
However, I find the use of the terms Shari’ah and ijtihad problematic. You state in your post you are using shari’ah not for what it actually means but for the way Islamophobes use it, but you are also coining a new meaning of the term ijtihad which is not what that term actually means in Islamic legal thought, but a new meaning you’ve come up with for it.
I understand the point of your post was something different, but I think we should be trying to actually understand those terms and the concepts underlying them, rather than just reinforcing the misconceived ways in which the terms are thought of and used by both Muslims and non-Muslims.
I’m reading Wael Hallaq’s book Shari’a: Theory, Practice, Transformations right now and he talks in the introduction about the extremely problematic way in which Shari’a is talked about in our time even by scholars (a discussion in which he relies heavily on Foucault and which I am just trying to understand but which even superficially raises some very important points).
Again, I know you were going for something different, more about movement conservatism and pragmatism and liberalism. As people who read this blog will know, I’m suspicious of liberal pragmatism and I am not a conservative.
Liberals and leftists aren’t the same.
Also, ijtihad is a techincal legal term. So doing ijtihad is really just adding more to the vast corpus of the sharia.
Conor Friedersdorf laments the InstaPithiness.
The spokesman for the American Family Association, a right-wing group, has issued a statement calling for the purging of Muslim soldiers from US military ranks.
“Of course, most U.S. Muslims don’t shoot up their fellow soldiers. Fine. As soon as Muslims give us a foolproof way to identify their jihadis from their moderates, we’ll go back to allowing them to serve. You tell us who the ones are that we have to worry about, prove you’re right, and Muslims can once again serve. Until that day comes, we simply cannot afford the risk. You invent a jihadi-detector that works every time it’s used, and we’ll welcome you back with open arms.”
“This is not Islamophobia, it is Islamo-realism.”
Meanwhile, the relatives of one of the victims has spoken out against the collective scapegoating of Muslims.
“You can’t blanket a whole group of people. There’s extremists in every religion, and there’s extremists all over the world,” said Cahill’s daughter, Kerry. “And I don’t think that we can blanket a whole group of people when this man obviously was ill, I think.”
Cahill’s other daughter, Keely Vanacker, expanded: “The death of our father, or any of these victims, shouldn’t be an excuse or reason to begin to hate an entire group of people.”
likewise, at RedState:
One of the enduring fallacies of the Bush Administration’s prosecution of the War on Terror was the refusal to admit that islam was neither peaceful in nature nor a disinterested observer in the war. This is not to say that all muslims are members of al-Qaeda, but to blithely ignore the religious dimension of the war was simply wrongheaded. To continue to ignore the particular vulnerability of muslim troops and officers to the propaganda on the grounds and label that very unremarkable observation as being racist or xenophobic is a fatal error. As we saw yesterday at Fort Hood.
an “unremarkable” observation, eh? reminds me of the quote about the banality of evil.
btw please add “conservatives” and “conservatism” to the tags
Elie Wiesel on the GOP Tea Party’s anti-Semitism and Holocaust comparisons: “This kind of political hatred is indecent and disgusting”
– The Elie Wiesel Foundation (@eliewieselfdn) on Twitter
The jews need to clam up and accept the fact that they are in a Chritian country.
This hollowcost thing is totally overblown by the jewish.
Eli Wiesel should just go back to Indonesia. I don’t see him condemnig the terrorist shooter at Fort Hood.
Elie is a whiner. She should stop her whining. You didn’t not complane when the libs were calling Bush Hitler.
Please, Johnpi, in your infinite wisdom…what other word is there to describe these people other than….well….stupid?
WEC = White evangelical Christians.
“These people” = All white evangelical Christians?
Yup. white evangelical christians and their apologists.
so, why is it okay to generalize about one group of religious people based on teh asshattery of their extreme fringe, but not another?
one of the most powerful criiques we have of the jafis is that they adopt the same arguments as the extremist jihadis (ie, Spencer and bin Laden make identical arguments about Islam). We must not fall into the same trap ourselves.
Because WECs all believe it is their right….nay duty!
to meddle and proselytize.
Even the “good” WECs.
Being WEC means never having to say you’re sorry…..or that you were wrong.
I’ve worked with some evangelical Christianss, and was never once proselytized. Aren’t you being unfair and prejudiced?
No.
Ask your co-workers Johnpi if they believe in spreading the “good word”.
Ask them if they believe xians should get to proselytize in MENA.
I’m sure if you ask a few questions of someone of any group you will be able to find some answers that confirm your prejudice/validate your malice.
What is wrong with you Johnpi?
WECs believe that it is their RIGHT and their DUTY to proselytize and meddle.
THEY ALL BELIEVE THAT.
THAT IS WHAT EVANGELICAL MEANS….TO EVANGELIZE.
This is not a problem as long as the evangelizers have no power, like your co-workers.
It becomes a BIG PROBLEM when they have power like Bush.
Aziz, I understand you employ a hands off approach to moderating these boards and I generally appreciate that. But what happens when comments like the above – repeated ad nauseam – take over the boards?
These are basically equivalent to the libelous “zomg taqiyya!” claims that the jafi-sphere throws at us, so it makes it difficult to argue against this kind of bigotry in good faith on these boards, when comments like the above are allowed to stand here.
It’s getting past the point of absurd.
Stating the truth is not bigotry, null.
A great deal…..even most of the worlds ills are due to white christian proselytizing, missionariism, colonialism and general meddling. I bitterly resent you and others want to give WECs a pass because they are doin’ it out of “love”.
They have no right.
The Crusades, Operation Ajax, spanish and portugese missionariism, the British Raj, Kashmir, French Indochine, the post-WWII partion of MENA, Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, triple digit population growth in Africa…..all I want is for people to acknowledge the truth…..that Big White Christian Bwana caused all this blood, pain, agony and death and needs to accept responsibility.
And saying they did it out of “love” is the most evil of all.
Aziz, allowing an uninterrupted flow of bigotry to spill out on your blog day after day will eventually lead people who don’t know you to assume you approve of it.
so, why is it okay to generalize about one group of religious people based on teh asshattery of their extreme fringe, but not another?
Because it is not just the fringe. The whole of white evangelical christians believe is their right and duty to mess with other people. That is the meaning of evangelize. I just want an acknowledgement of that.
The Granada blog was right about TI….when teh WECs cry out “why do they hate us?” instead of rubbing their pig-ignorant noses in the valid historical reasons for that hatred people here like null and johnpi say, “oh we dont hate you, its just those bad muslims over there…those extreme fringe muslims”.
Well I wont play that.
Let me repeat….interfaith dialog with WECs is useless until they acknowledge they have no right to missionariism and proselytization.
It is not bigotry Johnpi.
It is al-haqq.
Tell you what, I’ll settle for you and null just saying that WECs have no right to proselytize.
Shams – You’re an arrogant bigot. And your ceaseless carrying on about WECs and all non-Muslims (as when you said “There are NO non-Muslim commenters that have sufficient intellectual substrate to be persuadable.”) misrepresents American Muslims.
Aziz is being irresponsible to the Muslim community to operate a top-rated Muslim blog and then allow your bigotry to be so much of the face of the blog to the larger society.
You can’t do it can you Johnpi?
You can’t just say WEC proselytizing is wrong?
At this point Shams, I know that acknowledging any part of your narrative about WECs and non-Muslims feeds into your bigotry and leads to yet more offensive statements.
You’ve basically stated you are going to attack part of the readership of the blog (Christian readers and non-Muslims). This is by definition troll behavior, and responsible blogs all over the web ban trolls. I don’t know why Aziz would want to differ from the standard of responsible blog owners and let you carry on…
Johnpi, hundreds of thousands of muslims have died in Iraq because of the proselytization of white “judeo-christian” democracy……”democracy promotion”.
You can’t acknowledge that?
“I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.”
I felt that when I learned the truth about how many muslims died for Bush’s “democracy promotion.”
Can’t you hear them Johnpi?
I think Dr. Hasan heard those voices crying out for justice.
And it drove him mad.
There’s a term for what you’re engaging in. You’re leveling a charge of “collective guilt,” which often leads to rationalizations for collective retaliation. And everybody knows from the recent example of Gaza that this kind of thinking can lead to deeply, deeply immoral outcomes.
No I am not.
I just want an honest acknowledgement that evangelizing and proselytizing are basically wrong, even if they are part of a religion. That those actions don’t get a pass because of politically correct religious pandering.
The people are still dying in Afghanistan and Iraq, and they will be for a long, long time.
Evangelizing and proselytizing are immoral acts of intellectual molestation that are deeply disrespectful of other humans.
I’m sure you’ve anticipated that the definition of ‘proselytize’ is “to convert or attempt to convert” and you are ready to effective respond to the accusation of having an arbitrary double standard since you aren’t criticizing Muslims for the same behavior.
But I’ll ask anyway: In a pluralistic multi-religious society where no religion is given primacy, aren’t you applying a double standard?
Johnpi, I am a Sufi.
Sufi’s don’t proselytize.
Neither do Jews.
You’re being deliberately obtuse. I’m sure you’re well aware that for the majority of Muslims, Dawah is a religious duty. Pretending we don’t exist doesn’t change that fact.
I guess I disagree on a fundamental level – I think prosletyzation and evangelizing are perfetcly valid forms of expression and free speech. I am a Darwinist when it comes to the field of ideas,a nd only by rapid dispersal and sharing of ideas can they evolve and grow more “fit” for survival. The core concepts of Islam are unchanging and eternal, but teh cultural and philosophical aspects of our faith are only strengthened by exposure to other ideas.
and yes, if someone evangelizes to someone of weak faith – like Fathima Rifqa Bary – then she may well turn away. That is her decision, and her naseeb. It is sad but it is also her responsibility. Islam – the community of believers – is strengthened by having people such as her willingly turn away from teh faith, just as a bell curve redistributes its mean upwards as you filter out the low end.
I dont see predation here. I see give and take at teh margins of competing meme complexes. You win some and you lose some, but the dynamic interchange at the edges is a source of energy that does ultimately shape teh center.
I also strongly believe that prosletyzation and evangelism are protected under secular law, free speecha nd teh Bill of Rights. I defend the right for “WECs” to do dawah of their own just as I do muslims’ right. I am not concerned that these activities will harm me or my family, because we are strong. And its foolish to worry about any harm coming to Islam for it. Islam is eternal and cannot be harmed nor warred upon nor attacked. It simply is.
Let them prosletyze. I dont care.
That is not at all what I am talking about.
I am talking about proselytizing WEC culture by force of arms in MENA.
I am talking about the harm Big White Christian Bwana has inflicted on the rest of the world in the name do-gooder fuckery…..like triple digit population growth in Africa.
What did white evangelical christian Bush do in Iraq?
What is the Bush doctrine but proselytization of judeo-xian style government by force of arms?
WEC proselytization and evangelism are harmless (if offensive) unless they are backed by the power of the chief executive.
Until the WECs accept responsibility for the horrific damage caused by Bush’s “democracy promotion” this stuff will continue to happen.
They believe it is their right.
And Rifqa Bary was a child.
Until the WECs
Assigning collective guilt to a group of people because they share the same religion is immoral. It sanctions collective violence against the innocent.
there are no innocent.
WECs all believe it their is duty and right to evangelize.
other wise they would not be called evangelicals.
WECs all believe it their is duty and right to evangelize.
as do we, as muslims and americans.
As do I.
I don’t.
“Beware of confining yourself to a particular belief and denying all else, for much good would elude you—indeed, the knowledge of reality would elude you. Be in yourself a matter for all forms of belief, for God is too vast and tremendous to be restricted to one belief rather than another.”
Yours is better for you, mine is better for me.
wahdat al-wujud
wahdat al-shuhud
bi la kayfah
So what? As do most Muslims. You’re a hypocrite.
lol
make up your mind….am I an arrogant bigot AND a hypocrite?
is that even possible?
Yes both. Commonly they go hand-in-hand.
Now who is ad-homming?
Isnt rather hypocritical of you Johnpi?
You have made sweeping generalizations and condemnations of an entire group of people, while ignoring at the same time that the majority of the people you self-identify with are engaged in or committed to the same behavior.
My description is accurate, not ad hominen.
I see give and take at teh margins of competing meme complexes. You win some and you lose some, but the dynamic interchange at the edges is a source of energy that does ultimately shape teh center.
No…. ….i know this will make you sad, my habbibi….but as a Ghazalian and an ardant otaku of Social Brain Hypothesis…..that is simply quite false.
It is impossible to build a dihliz with WECs…..they are already intruding into your intellectual space, and SBH mandates they will never give a centimeter.
I’ve been to MENA – many countries therein – and trust me, the culture we export is one they eagerly consume. Theres no “force of arms” exporting of our culture whatsoever. Have you ever been to Dubai? Or Najaf? Or San’a? Or Cairo? I have. And what I’ve seen is that arab culture is resilient enough to cope with the infusion of Western mores as well as preserve their own traditions. Like everything else, it is a souk of ideas and influences. To argue that we are imposing our culture on them, and unwillingly at that, is to infantilize them.
Africa is a mess but thats mostly Europe’s and China’s playground. We have no Africa policy.
I dont believe there exists any such thing as “judeo-xian style of government”. But democracy is something teh Iraqis themselves want. I know. I’ve asked them.
finally, FRB was 17. Thats not a child – one year shy of adult age? i know plenty of 17 year olds whose faith would not have been shaken in the least by similar experiences. The 17 year olds I know, among them there are those who make me feel like a child.
It sounds horrible to admit, but its harsh truth. Bary was weak in Deen and thats why she was so easily lured away.
the culture we export is one they eagerly consume
Yup, tribology, the science of rubbing….acculturation, where cultures rub off on each other.
But that is not what happened in Iraq, is it?
Conflating Iraq with the entirety of the Middle East/North Africa doesn’t get you off the hook for your insulting conception of the peoples of that region.
But that is not what happened in Iraq, is it?
from what I’ve seen, yes it has.
Umm….forgive me, but hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians have died so far in that little democracy promotion proselytization adventure.
And Johnpi, I specifically addressed the individual nature of Big White Christian Bwanas particular geo-located meddles.
I am not generalizing.
I think I understood your response to Aziz, but the part that was intended for me is incoherent.
Brilliant article on Ayn Rand and her lasting legacy of insanity to the Right.
I have been listening to Frontline’s Podcast “The Warning” that chronicles how bull-headed Greenspan, svengalied by Ayn Rand’s belief in total deregulation of capital markets, refused to see what was happening and going to explode in the economy.
He doesn’t look like such a “wizard” now. Just an arrogant fool.
In terms of politics, I would consider myself to be a conservative with a libertarian bent – and I’m always surprised when otherwise sane people name Ayn Rand as their favourite author/philosopher.
I had to read Anthem twice in a row – just to confirm that yes, that was a pile of crap. If Ayn Rand is your favourite author, you need to try harder.
i may be misreading you, but did you just refer to Anathem as a pile of crap?
(Anathem = novel by Neal Stephenson, not Ayn Rand)
No, the novella Anthem – Rand’s amatuerish and unoriginal rip off of Zamyatin’s ‘We’.
Dystopian novels – if there exists a more shallow form of expression, I don’t want to know about it.
ahhh – my reading comprehension = Bad
sorry
“The way the Muslim Brotherhood group manages internal disagreement shows … the low level of the group’s flexibility in dealing with those who disagree with it. The competition between the group wings seems to be a “zero sum” game,” writes Khalil al-Anani, an analyst at Egypt’s Al-Siyassa Al-Dawliya magazine.
“Therefore, very often the conservatives will insist on punishing the reformists organisationally, politically and morally and under the claim of keeping the cohesiveness of the group.”
I’m highlighting the excerpt above because it rings true with my experience generally that conservatives tend to retaliate in-group and have trouble sharing power (the tendency of conservatives in any polity to drift toward authoritarianism is well-documented). The strength of the movement overall will in part be determined by conservatives ability to restrain themselves.
Also in the article, some MB supporters say government media is hyping the conflict to try to weaken the group.
For background here’s a previous story about the clash here.
Some red meat for Shams: In the news cycle today is word of a bible project to eliminate ‘liberal bias.’ The Conservative Bible Project sets forth the following guidelines:
1.Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias
2.Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, “gender inclusive” language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity
3.Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level[3]
4.Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop;[4] defective translations use the word “comrade” three times as often as “volunteer”; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as “word”, “peace”, and “miracle”.
5.Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as “gamble” rather than “cast lots”;[5] using modern political terms, such as “register” rather than “enroll” for the census
6.Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.
7.Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning
8.Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story
9.Credit Open-Mindedness of Disciples: crediting open-mindedness, often found in youngsters like the eyewitnesses Mark and John, the authors of two of the Gospels
10.Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word “Lord” rather than “Jehovah” or “Yahweh” or “Lord God.”
[Insert pithy quip here]
reading the finished product will kill brain cells….like conservatives have any to spare.
Consider……what 40 years of memetic selection for individuals either too IQ-challenged or too uneducated to understand theory of evolution has done to the conservative base.
Inverse Social Darwinism, aka selection for stupid.
#6 is great:
Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.
Use all your rational faculties and common sense to finally conclude and admit that you are being chased down by a super-natural being who is red, had horns and carries a triad. Fear him!
I believe that both hell (Jahannam) and the devil (Al-Shaytan) are real, and I am not in any way a conservative…
Got you beat, Abunoor.
I believe in the Jinn and in maarifa.
right-wing terrorism: a US census worker was found hanged, with the word “FED” across his chest, in Kentucky.
shams, 
Pretty Pink Unicorns, 
null, and 3 others are discussing. 
thabet and 
Abu Noor Al-Irlandee are discussing. 
johnpi, 
Buzz are discussing.
Its Mote in God’s Eye Analogy Week!!!
Aziz has Crazy Eddie syndrome, and im a stowaway practicing my mad engineer-motie skillz on TAS.