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IRANIAN EYES
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=959YB3pZeO4
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FOR NEDA.... AND YOUTH... AND FREEDOM... WE HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN..... NEDA 2009
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Kuwaiti Politician Explains Why Rich Muslim States Won’t Accept Syrian Refugees (Video)
Almost 50,000 asylum-seekers reached Greece in July alone.
But the wealthiest Muslim nations – Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, Oman and Kuwait have accepted NO SYRIAN REFUGEES!
** The wealthiest Gulf nations argue that accepting large numbers of Syrian refugees is a serious threat to the safety of its citizens because terrorists could hide themselves among civilians.
A Kuwaiti politician appeared on Middle East television and explained why the Gulf States won’t accept Syrian refugees-
— They come from different cultures and won’t assimilate.
#Syria: Number of #Syrian #refugees taken in by countries in the Middle East. pic.twitter.com/qWcktXwEkW
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/09/kuwaiti-politician-explains-why-rich-muslim-states-wont-accept-syrian-refugees-video/
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The Middle East Does Not Need Stability
This so-called stability encompasses millions of Arabs living under criminal regimes and evil tyrannies.
When a tank enters a residential neighborhood, sows fear and destruction, and the local kids throw stones at it, what is this called? "Disturbing the peace." And what do you call the detention of those stone-throwers, allowing the tank to continue on its way without any more trouble? "Restoring order."
That is how we have shaped our disgustingly laundered language to serve our one and only narrative; how we would describe to ourselves the misleading reality in which we live. Meanwhile, tanks are no longer entering residential areas; order is somehow being maintained in the territories without them. The occupier oppresses, the occupied people overcome their instincts and their struggle, and good order is maintained - for now. Stability.
Egypt also suddenly dared to "disturb the peace." Its people, who have had enough of the country's corrupt government and the tyrannical silencing of their voices, have taken to the streets. Riots. The Western world, including Israel, has tensed in the face of this great danger - the stability in the Middle East is about to be undermined.
Indeed, that stability should be undermined. The stability in the region, something which Westerners and Israeli have come to yearn, merely means perpetuating the status quo. That situation might be good for Israel and the West, but it is very bad for the millions of people who have had to pay the price. Maintaining Mideast stability means perpetuating the intolerable situation by which some 2.5 million Palestinians exist without any rights under the heel of Israeli rule; and another few million Palestinian refugees from the war of 1948 are living in camps in Arab countries, where they also lack any rights, hope, livelihood and dignity.
This so-called stability encompasses millions of Arabs living under criminal regimes and evil tyrannies. In stable Saudi Arabia, the women are regarded as the lowest of the low; in stable Syria, any sign of opposition is repressed; in stable Jordan and Morocco, the apple of the eye of the West and Israel, people are frightened to utter a word of criticism against their kings, even in casual coffee-shop conversations.
The yearned-for stability in the Middle East includes millions of poor and ignorant people in Egypt, while the ruling families celebrate with their billions in capital. It includes regimes, the bulk of whose budgets are scandalously channeled to the military, endlessly and unnecessarily arming themselves to preserve the regime - at the expense of education, health care, development and welfare. The stability entails rule that passes from father to son (and not just in the region's monarchies ) and false elections in which only representatives of the ruling parties are allowed to run.
It involves unnecessary, worthless wars, civil wars and wars between countries in which the people give their blood because of the whims and megalomanic urges of their rulers. It represses free thought, self-determination and the struggle for freedom. It consists of weakness, lack of growth and development, lack of opportunity for achievement and almost nonexistent benefits for the masses, whose situation is frightfully stable. In their poverty and oppression, they are stable.
A region rich in natural and human resources, which could have thrived at least as much as the Far East, has been standing stable for decades. After Africa, it is the most backward place in the world.
That is the stability we apparently want to preserve; the stability that the United States always wants to preserve; the stability that Europe wants to preserve. Any undermining of this stability is considered disturbing the peace - and that is bad according to our definition.
But let us remember that when Israel was established, this signified a huge disturbance to the region - one that greatly undermined its stability and posed the greatest danger; but it was a just disturbance, to us and to the West. Now the time has come to disturb the peace some more, to undermine the worthless stability in which the Middle East is living.
The peoples of Tunisia and Egypt have begun the process. The United States and Europe stuttered at first, but quickly came to their senses. They also finally realized that the region's stability is not only unjust, it is misleading: It will be undermined in the end. When the tank invades our lives, stones must be thrown at it; the infuriating stability of the Middle East must be wiped out.
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TALIBAN JACK...... gays and women and girls and unions don't matter much it seems in this world
CANADA- STANDING UP FOR GLOBAL NEDAS... AND HER
BROTHERS...... JUNE- 2009- WE REMEMBER NEDA
CANADA'S BLURRED VISION: (Hey Ayatollah, Leave Those Kids Alone!)
Another Brick In The Wall -
with consent of Pink Floyd....
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12/12 Arts United 4 Iran: Celebrating the Civil & Human Rights Movement in Iran- 2009
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Islamism - The problem - What is wrong with the Islamic world?
 Stop the jihad now! End the Islamist violence against infidels! Stop the jihad in Iraq, Palestine and Sudan! Peace on earth now! From standwithus.com. See here. |
Summary
The root cause of Islamist terror
Opinion Polls in the Islamic world Muslims against Islamism Denial and obfuscation Fatwa against Terrorism Maryam Namazie Islam and reformation The lost glory of the Middle East |
Islam
Killings for Islam
Islam and human rights Unfree Islamic states The solution - The Islamic world must change In defence of cultural imperialism |
The problem - What is wrong with the Islamic world?
After 9/11, when thousands of American innocents were killed by Islamic extremists for no reason, the central question is not: "Why do they hate us?". The central question is not: "What is wrong with American foreign policy?"The central question is: What is wrong with the Islamic world, and how will it reform?
The basic problem is very clear. It is that millions of people in the Islamic world do not believe in free speech, freedom of religion, democracy, a secular state, free enterprise and human rights. Millions of Muslims also have a hatred for Israel and America that has no rational basis.
- Who is
our enemy?, by Steven Den Beste, has a hard time defining who exactly is
the west's enemy, but correctly points out it is not just a small group
of terrorists. Much of the Islamic world - and almost all of the Arab
Islamic world - must change.
- "This war will continue until the traditional crippled Arab culture is shattered. It won't end until they embrace reform or have it forced on them. Until a year ago, we were willing to be patient and let them embrace it slowly. Now we have no choice: we have to force them to reform because we cannot be safe until they do."
- "what we have to do is to take the 14th century culture of our enemies and bring it into the 17th century. Once we've done that, then we can work on bringing them into the 21st century ... But they've got to accept their own failure, personally and nationally and culturally. That is the essential first step. They've got to accept that the cause of their failure is their own culture ... And they've got to accept that the only way to succeed is to change. That will be a difficult fight, and it's going to take decades. Along the way it's going to be necessary to remove many governments which come to power and yet again try to embrace the past"
- The war will last decades: "This war will end when they change, but not before."
- We (the west) don't want to do this. We would far prefer to let them stay in their own failed societies. Who on earth would volunteer for the job of reforming the Middle East? What a pain that after finally winning the Cold War, and entering what we hoped was a new era of peace and prosperity, the west now has to sign up for this endless exhausting job.
- We don't want to do this. We (the west) have to do this.
Because they threaten us. Because they will destroy one of our cities with
nuclear weapons as soon as they get a chance. So we have to reform them.
They have forced us to.
- "Future War", 11 May 2007, captures how annoying it is that we have to deal with these people (the Islamists). It is almost embarrassing that these medieval savages are the future we have to deal with. He notes that despite having a centuries-out-of-date medieval philosophy, they do know how to fight a 21st century media war against soft democracies: "The future is armed to the teeth and is highly motivated, it is dispersed across an ever wider landscape, and it is not waiting for us to arrive: it has begun its relentless assault regardless, chanting the ancient slogans of religious bigotry and blood for a vengeful god. Unless we step into it and learn to fight the future war more effectively than our enemies, we have already lost."
Summary
If you want a 5 minute summary of what is wrong with the Islamic world, here it is. Freedom House ranks countries' political freedoms and civil liberties as "Free", "Partly Free" and "Not Free".Here is their 2013 ranking for the main belt of Islamic countries:
Or, as a map, their 2014 ranking:
Green - "Free".
Yellow - "Partly Free".
Purple - "Not Free".
And the entire world:
Map of world freedom 2014, based on rankings of Freedom House.
Green - "Free".
Yellow - "Partly Free".
Purple - "Not Free".
That's it, in a nutshell. That's the problem.
The root cause of Islamist terror
Opinion Polls in the Islamic world
Muslims against Islamism
One of the most depressing aspects of the modern crisis has been how little soul-searching there has been in Islam since 9/11. The West has done far more soul-searching, even though it is not to blame. There has been depressingly little discussion among Muslims of what is wrong with the Islamic world to have: (a) produced these evil butchers (and thousands more like them), and: (b) to have so many poor and unfree and violent countries. Apart from a couple of days pause, there has been just the same old Islamic arrogance, as if it's the West that has to apologise for being rich and free.There are a few brave voices in the Muslim world, but so few it is depressing.
- Identifying Moderate Muslims by Daniel Pipes, November 23, 2004.
- It can be hard. I have been
fooled myself.
- Some good tests:
- Attitudes to apostasy.
- Attitudes to criticism of the Prophet.
- Attitudes to blasphemy.
- Attitudes to Israel.
- Pro-Israel Arabs and Muslims
- Muslim freethinkers
- Moderate Muslims in the UK (Quilliam
Foundation, British Muslims for Secular Democracy)
- Moderate Muslims in Ireland
(Shaheed Satardien, Ali Al Saleh, Ahmadis)
- The Ahmadis
- The Ahmadis do genuinely appear to be peaceful, and opposed to both terror (jihad) and oppression (sharia).
- Has any Ahmadi ever carried out a terror attack? Ever? Tell me here.
- M. Zuhdi Jasser
- Irshad Manji
- The Quilliam Foundation (Maajid Nawaz,
Ed Husain)
- Majed Moughni
- Tarek Fatah
- Free Muslim Coalition Against Terrorism
- Ali Al-Ahmed of the Saudi Institute
- Cultural Institute of the Italian Islamic
Community supports Israel, and democracy in the Middle East.
- Abd
al-Hamid al-Ansari of Qatar (and here)
- Arabs are Still Unwilling to Accept that They Carried Out 9/11 by Abd al-Hamid al-Ansari. He understands, as western leftists don't, that the 9/11 killers were not poor, or oppressed: "Why don't we want to acknowledge that these young people [who carried out 9/11] were the sons of a culture that is hostile toward the world, not idiots or mad. No one enticed them, and they did not suffer from oppression, repression, or poverty. They carried out the operation because of their belief that it was Jihad and martyrdom."
- Center for the Study of Islam and
Democracy
- A Memo to American
Muslims (and discussion)
by Muqtedar Khan
- "Muslims love to live in the U.S. but also love to hate it. Many openly claim that the U.S. is a terrorist state but they continue to live in it. Their decision to live here is testimony that they would rather live here than anywhere else. As an Indian Muslim, I know for sure that nowhere on earth, including India, will I get the same sense of dignity and respect that I have received in the U.S."
- "It is time that we acknowledge that the freedoms we enjoy in the US are more desirable to us than superficial solidarity with the Muslim World. If you disagree than prove it by packing your bags and going to whichever Muslim country you identify with."
- A Memo to American
Muslims (and discussion)
by Muqtedar Khan
- What Muslims
should have done since 9/11
- "Imagine that a sect of fanatical Jews blew up three American buildings, killing thousands. Imagine that this sect of Jews issued a declaration of holy war on the United States, in the name of Judaism."
- "What do you think would have been the response of the rest of the Jews in America and around the world? Our ears would have been deafened by the roar of Jews' moral outrage, their resounding support for America, and their demands for the destruction of the radical sect. You wouldn't be able to turn around in NYC or any urban center without seeing Jews wearing some insignia to show their love for America and hatred for the sect. There would be endless TV spots sponsored by Jewish organizations, there would be T-shirts with "Those killers aren't Jews," there would be multitudes of young Jews volunteering to go into the military to fight the sect."
- Why didn't Muslims do this?
- Thomas
Friedman, 3 Dec 2008, on the hypocrisy and silence of the Muslim world after
Mumbai: "After
all, if 10 young Indians from a splinter wing of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya
Janata Party traveled by boat to Pakistan, shot up two hotels in Karachi and the
central train station, killed at least 173 people, and then, for good measure,
murdered the imam and his
wife at a Saudi-financed mosque while they were cradling their 2-year-old
son - purely because they were Sunni Muslims - where would we be today? The
entire Muslim world would be aflame and in the streets."
- As Ed Morrissey says: "Has Friedman seen massive protests in the streets against radical Islamist terrorists in these Muslim countries, ever? Did any of them protest the 9/11 attacks, or the Madrid attack, or any of the large-scale attacks on Western civilians or previous attacks in India at all?"
Denial and obfuscation
A lot of Muslims "against terrorism" turn out to be anything but. You have to examine each case.- Huffington
Post Lists Known Terrorists As Opponents of Terror, August 27, 2014. The
Huffington Post cherry-picks comments to come up with a slideshow titled "Muslim
Leaders Condemn Terrorism". "the Huffington Post's slideshow included
terrorist supporters and financiers as well as leaders of the known terrorist
group Hamas".
- The crackpot websites of Harun Yahya of Turkey illustrate clearly the state of
denial of so much of the Islamic world:
- Islam Denounces Terrorism - sounds great doesn't it? Sadly, no. In fact, it blames terrorism on atheism and Darwinism, rather than Islam. (Harun Yahya is a leading Islamic "creationist".)
- Islam Denounces Antisemitism blames anti-semitism on atheism and Darwinism, rather than Islam. (Not that he is necessarily against anti-semitism. Harun Yahya has a track record as an enthusiastic anti-semite and Holocaust denier.)
- Harun Yahya has been running a successful campaign in Turkey to ban websites that criticise him, including Richard Dawkins' site.
- Edip Yuksel talks
about "Islamic reform" and opposes creationism.
- Sounds good? Sadly, no. See his attacks on anti-jihadists.
- And more and search.
- Queen Rania of Jordan
illustrates the hesitant, narrow-minded approach of Muslim elites to these
issues.
- Her YouTube channel is mainly a load of requests that non-Muslims stop stereotyping all Muslims just because of the vast amount of Islamic violence in the world.
- While obviously such stereotyping is wrong, this misses the point. The main point is the vast amount of Islamic violence in the world. Non-Muslims having a more subtle or less subtle view of this violence is going to do nothing to actually stop the violence. To stop the violence would require addressing the popular ideology of Islamist terror and jihad, which is popular in Jordan and surrounding countries, and which has its roots in the Koran and the violent life of Muhammad. It seems unlikely that she will ever address these issues.
- Queen Rania does condemn the Jordan bombings:
which is a start. But it would be
more convincing if she demonstrated her horror at similar bombings in Israel,
especially given that the majority of her fellow
Jordanians support them. If she ever addresses the fact that the majority of
Jordanians support terror bombings of Jews in Israel, please let me know.
- Asma Assad, wife of the Syrian dictator.
- Minaret
of Freedom Institute
- The Minaret of Freedom Institute looked good first time I saw it. It claims to support democracy and free markets in the Islamic world.
- But on a closer look, it supports sharia, opposed the Iraq war, is extremely anti-Israel, and gave a platform to Sami Al-Arian. Not so impressive.
It's a joke, but actually, it's serious too.
Imagine, for just one second, that the above could happen.
Imagine what a future of freedom and prosperity there would be for the Islamic world.
Will it take centuries before the Islamic world gets sense, and becomes rich and free like us, or will it only take decades?
From The People's Cube.
Fatwa against Terrorism
- Fatwa against Terrorism by Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri. See their site.
- That sounds great doesn't it?
- Don't get your hopes up. Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri supports
the death sentence for blasphemy: "My point of view was, and I managed
to get this made into law, that whoever commits blasphemy against the
Prophet, Moslem or non-Moslem, man or woman ... their punishment will be death!
... blasphemy against the Prophet will not imply any possibility for repentance
or forgiveness, rather, he must be executed immediately! ... And those who open
their mouths, Moslem, Jew, Christian, believer, infidel, man or woman, will be
executed like a dog!"
- I think we will find that the "terrorism" he condemns is something other than what we mean by "terrorism", and does not include, say, terror attacks against Israeli civilians.
- If "Fatwa against Terrorism" ever condemns terror against Israel, please tell me.
- In 2013, I tweeted to both fatwaonterror and TahirulQadri to ask them did they condemn terror against Israel, and if so, where.
- They did not reply. Two anti-Israel lefties, Gerry Casey and "Voodoo Criminology", rushed to
their defence. But no condemnation of terror against Israel appeared.
- Robert Spencer notes that the "Fatwa on Terrorism and Suicide Bombings" simply ignores the difficult Quran verses on violence, rather than addressing them. "There is a difference between reform and deception. Reformers confront what they are wishing to change. They show why they think the established view is wrong and offer an alternative. Qadri does not do that. He simply ignores key elements of the jihadist understanding of the Qur’an, offering no refutation or alternative explanation of verses that all too many Muslims believe are commanding them to do violence."
Maryam Namazie
Maryam Namazie, an atheist, ex-Muslim, activist from Iran, deserves a category all of her own. She is anti-jihad and anti-Israel. That makes no sense. Very few people in the world are in that category.- She writes well against sharia and jihad, and I even quote her approvingly.
- But her real problem is that she is a communist ex-Muslim. So she has
got rid of Islam, but filled her head with new crap from the West.
- Maryam Namazie is anti-American.
- 2006 interview shows she regards the US war against the jihad as "terrorism". "There is also another pole of terrorism in the world today, which is US state terrorism - an example of which can be seen by looking at the situation in Iraq."
- Some "anti-jihad" person she is!
- Maryam Namazie is anti-Israel.
- Dec 2008: She says Israel carries out "genocide" against the people of Gaza.
- Robert Spencer v. Maryam Namazie. And more and more. I'm on Spencer's side.
- Spencer is unimpressed by Namazie being anti-Israel and yet also claiming to
be anti-jihad: "An anti-jihadist who doesn't support the country on the front
lines of the global jihad? Pull my other leg."
- Maryam Namazie, 16 Oct 2015, compares UKIP to ISIS: "Most Syrians despise ISIS just like most Brits despise UKIP". Nutcase.
She sure is narrow minded: Maryam Namazie blocked me on Twitter.
I don't think I ever interacted with her! She just blocked me pre-emptively.
She wants no allies against sharia unless they are commies.
Daft person.
Islam, reformation, and freedom of religion
- Islam
- Freedom of religion
- Bush is
wrong - Islam, even "moderate" Islam, does not have "a commitment
to religious freedom". That is the whole problem. Article by Diana West.
- If you disagree, show me a few Muslim countries with atheist pages like mine and I'll happily link to them and say I was wrong.
- I cannot find a single openly pro-atheist group in the
entire Arab Islamic world.
- The Arab Islamic world is like Europe in the 17th century (before freedom of
religion).
- How religious freedom was established in the West (and mirror) - article by James Q. Wilson. - The Arab world has a lot to learn from the West. And this is the most important lesson of all. - How to establish a society with freedom of religion.
- Many Shia Muslims support America's war against their Sunni Muslim persecutors. Will they now finally learn the lesson of religious freedom?
- The Iraqi Shiite cleric, Sayyid Iyad Jamaleddine after the liberation - "We want a secular constitution. That is the most important point. If we write a secular constitution and separate religion from state, that would be the end of despotism and it would liberate religion as well as the human being. ... The problem of the Middle East cannot be solved unless all the states in the area become secular. ... The neighboring countries are all tyrannical countries and they are wary of a modern, liberal Iraq. ... That is why they work to foil the U.S. presence. ... If the U.S. wants to help Iraqis, it must help them the way it helped Germany and Japan, because to help Iraq is really to help 1.3 billion Muslims. Iraq will teach these values to the entire Islamic world."
- The future of Islam
- Caution
about the likelihood of an Islamic "reformation" by Theodore Dalrymple - It
may not go inevitably the same way that Christianity did. "Devout Muslims can
see (as Luther, Calvin, and others could not) the long-term consequences of the
Reformation and its consequent secularism".
- On the other hand, instead of a reformation, Muslims may simply lose their faith as they are exposed to the modern world and its ideas. And remember the majority of them have not yet been exposed to it. If you disagree, show me any website in the Islamic world which explains the arguments for atheism that have been developed in the west over the last 400 years.
- Wrestling
with Islam by David Warren argues that Islamism is a reaction to the fact
that the Muslim world is losing its faith.
- In fact, Dalrymple, an atheist, does think that ultimately Islam will go the same way as Christianity. Later in the article above: "The control that Islam has over its populations in an era of globalization reminds me of the hold that the Ceausescus appeared to have over the Rumanians: an absolute hold, until Ceausescu appeared one day on the balcony and was jeered by the crowd that had lost its fear. ... ultimately the fate of the Church of England awaits it. Its melancholy, withdrawing roar may well (unlike that of the Church of England) be not just long but bloody, but withdraw it will. The fanatics and the bombers do not represent a resurgence of unreformed, fundamentalist Islam, but its death rattle."
- Ali Sina also compares Islam's hold over its people with communism - brittle, and about to collapse.
- Caution
about the likelihood of an Islamic "reformation" by Theodore Dalrymple - It
may not go inevitably the same way that Christianity did. "Devout Muslims can
see (as Luther, Calvin, and others could not) the long-term consequences of the
Reformation and its consequent secularism".
- An
Iraqi blogger condemns the Iraqi Islamofascist "resistance" - "Islam
indeed excuses such barbaric acts. ... So yes, Islam is the problem here.
Poverty, economic conditions, abuse by so called colonialism, and political
frustration are not. Similar conditions elsewhere in the world have not prompted
non-Muslims to commit suicide bombings or fly planes into towers. Islam, along
with favourable cultural, tribal, and social values existing in the Arab world
has prompted that drive. Islam and the Quran alone are the root cause. The
solution is not however to alienate all Muslims, or to expel them, or annihilate
them. It is up to "moderate" Muslims and their clerics to carefully examine
their scriptures and to reform, the same way Jews and Christians did."
- The
(Really) Moderate Muslims of Kosovo: The world's newest country is a model of
Islamic tolerance, Michael J. Totten, Autumn 2008.
- "unlike most Muslim-majority nations, Kosovo is overwhelmingly pro-American, and its relations with Israel are excellent ... In 2004, a Gallup survey measured popular opinion of U.S. foreign policy around the world. Only ten countries rated American foreign policy favorably, and among those, Kosovo scored highest, registering 88 percent approval. ... Kosovars are fans of George W. Bush, both because he recognized Kosovo's independence and simply because he's the president. Graffiti in one Kosovar village proclaims THANKS USA AND BUSH. "You should have seen President Bush's face when he came to Albania," says a Kosovar Albanian ... "All over Western Europe he was met by protests, but the entire country of Albania turned out to welcome him." And Bill Clinton, who ordered the 1999 military intervention, is lionized."
- "Kosovo's brand of Islam may be the most liberal in the world. I saw no more women there wearing conservative Islamic clothing - one or two per day at most - than I've seen in Manhattan. There is no gender apartheid even in Kosovo's villages. Alcohol flows freely in restaurants, cafés, and bars, where you'll see as many young women in sexy outfits as you'd find in any Western European country. ... Religion in Kosovo is a private matter, not a public one. "We never talk about it," Berisha says.".
- [Kosovans] "offer the hope that Muslims need not be enemies of Christians, Jews, and the West, and that Muslim societies are not inherently opposed to religious pluralism and democracy. ... while the jihadist movements in the Middle East may appear to be an inevitable product of Islam, in many ways they are simply a religiously themed manifestation of the Arab world's political backwardness."
Western women in the Islamic world.
There are parts of the Islamic world that tolerate - for the sake of western money - westerners behaving in ways that the locals would never be allowed to.
These women are bringing the dress codes of the 1950s-1960s sexual revolution - an important part of western culture - to the beach in Abu Dhabi.
Photo 2010. From here.
Let us hope that decadent western culture destroys traditional Arab Islamic culture over the next few decades. Let us hope that their young people are seduced by the glamour of the West. Let us hope that their traditional ways are lost forever, and the vulgar secular consumerism of the West triumphs.
I am not kidding. I really do hope this will happen.
In defence of cultural imperialism
The solution - The Islamic world must change. America and the West must assert themselves.
The Middle East was once the centre of human civilization
It is sad, given its current state, to think that the Middle East was once the greatest place on earth - the centre of human civilization, the heart of all human knowledge. Will it ever be a great place again? Only if it changes its entire present culture, which may not involve abandoning Islam, but will certainly involve becoming more secular.
The Great Pyramid of Giza, Egypt.
For nearly 4,000 years this was the world's tallest building (from c.2570 BC to c.1300 AD).
Photo 2005 by Nina Aldin Thune. See terms of use. Egypt's lost glory: Egypt was once the greatest country on earth, at the vanguard of humanity's glorious civilization. And then the torch passed to other places, and Egyptians adopted ideas of little importance to human progress. It is sad to consider Egypt now, compared with what it once was. Even the discovery of Egypt's glorious past was done by westerners - not by Egyptians, who were largely uninterested in the topic. In fact, in 1196 Egyptian Muslims vandalised the Pyramids and tried to destroy them, and it was recorded that in 1378 Egyptian Muslims vandalised the Sphinx.
Let us hope that some day Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries are again at the frontier of human thought. For that ever to happen, they must change, and abandon the culture of their ancestors.
Raymond Ibrahim uses the above pictures to make the same point.
What kind of brain could you have to regard the woman on the left as "progress" from the woman on the right 4,000 years ago?
"Helping construct a stable democracy after decades of dictatorship is a massive undertaking. Yet we have a great advantage. Whenever people are given a choice in the matter, they prefer lives of freedom to lives of fear. Our enemies in Iraq are good at filling hospitals, but they do not build any. They can incite men to murder and suicide, but they cannot inspire men to live, and hope, and add to the progress of their country. The terrorists' only influence is violence, and their only agenda is death. Our agenda, in contrast, is freedom and independence, security and prosperity for the Iraqi people. ... Our coalition has a clear goal, understood by all - to see the Iraqi people in charge of Iraq for the first time in generations.
Like every nation that has made the journey to democracy, Iraqis will raise up a government that reflects their own culture and values. I sent American troops to Iraq to defend our security, not to stay as an occupying power. I sent American troops to Iraq to make its people free, not to make them American. Iraqis will write their own history, and find their own way. As they do, Iraqis can be certain, a free Iraq will always have a friend in the United States of America.
We believe that when all Middle Eastern peoples are finally allowed to live and think and work and worship as free men and women, they will reclaim the greatness of their own heritage. And when that day comes, the bitterness and burning hatreds that feed terrorism will fade and die away. America and all the world will be safer when hope has returned to the Middle East."
- George W. Bush, May 2004, on Iraq.
Such incredible generosity in saying "Iraq will always have a friend in the United States of America" - after Iraq had threatened the USA and its allies for so many years. America is fast to forgive, once a country changes. If the Arab Middle East can change and adopt modern ideas of freedom, everyone there can be free, rich allies of America. Heaven on earth is there for the taking.
"Here is something I have learned the hard way, but which a lot of well-meaning people in the West have a hard time accepting: All human beings are equal, but all cultures and religions are not. ... It is part of Muslim culture to oppress women and part of all tribal cultures to institutionalize patronage, nepotism and corruption. The culture of the Western Enlightenment is better. ... Instead of affirming the value of tribal lifestyles, people in the West - activists, thinkers, government officials - should be working to dismantle them."
- Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Nomad (2010).
"The Shariah law is the best justice, not the Western democracy which gives us bad regimes like Assad's."
- A Syrian jihadist bastard called Abu Omar al-Shesheni comically says that Assad's brutal, Oriental dictatorship was somehow "Western democracy", which is now discredited, and Islamism is the answer.
"People, you have tried secular rulings (republic, Baathist, Safavids) and it pained you. Now is time for an Islamic state."
- Maniac jihadists ISIS take over Mosul, June 2014, and comically claim that secular democracy has been tried and is now discredited.
Abu Omar al-Shesheni and ISIS sum up what is wrong with the Islamic world. They will try anything - Islamism, Shariah, theocracy, caliphate, tribalism, pan-Arabism, Marxism, communism, fascism, strongman dictatorship, royal family dictatorship. Anything, anything except liberal democracy.
http://www.markhumphrys.com/islamic.world.html
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