Orangeducks, an American contractor in Iraq, comments on the dysfunctional nature of Arab culture in “Why Progress In Iraq Is So Slow.”

Stephen Browne, an Okie who worked in Saudi Arabia, distills his experience into a set of conclusions in “They’re Not Americans In Funny Costumes.”

Isaac Schrödinger is a pro-USA, Pakistani-born, ex-Muslim who contrasts and compares Muslim and Western mindsets in “Isaac’s Journey.”

Read and learn.

mjk on July 30, 2008 at 8:25 AM

You’re on to some “things that cause terrorism” with the FREE SPEECH, but I must admit, I believe you go a bit on the jocular-side of things with the rest….

how about:

1) Free speech
…
9) LIBERTY (also known as God-given freedom), and
10) everything that logically follows from point 9.

McCain’s snappy ad team would be well advised to pick up on this theme – particularly in a light-hearted way – to show all the decisive “fence-sitting” Americans more clearly the differences AND CONSEQUENCES of voting for McCain vs. Barack (I know I’ll mangle even paraphrasing it, but The Obamboozler said something like:) “in the ultimate struggle, I’ll side with the Muslims” Obama.

They have a paranoid side to their behavior, but it’s not much worse that our own BDS nuts over here. I’ll take these moderates any day over a lot of other nonsense in the Arab and Muslim media.

Which is not to say that I trust them any further than I can throw them… :-)

there are intentional and premeditated provocations in order to drive the Muslims out of their current home – Europe.

Muhammed was a demon-possessed child molester. How’s that?

There is nothing admirable, likable, nor good in islam.

Virus-X on July 30, 2008 at 10:37 AM

And you are only talking about Islam’s better points.

Egyptian TV: Free speech causes terrorism

Jews caused the holocaust.
- Adolf Hitler

There was no holocaust, at least not yet anyway, but if there was one then Jews caused it.
- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Egyptian TV: Free speech causes terrorism

When I, a thoughtful and unblessed Presbyterian, examine the Koran, I know that beyond any question every Mohammedan is insane, not in all things, but in religious matters. I cannot prove to him that he is insane, because you never can prove anything to a lunatic — for that is a part of his insanity and the evidence of it.
- Mark Twain

70% of people in the West do not know who the prophet of Islam is, and know nothing about him

Mohammed (570-632), the founder of Islam, born in Mecca, Arabia. He was the son of Abdallah (545?-570)and his wife Amina, both of the tribe of Koreish, the ruling clan of Mecca.

-opening paragraph of the entry on Mohammed in The Universal Standard Encyclopedia (abridged vers. of the New Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia), New York; 1956. Vol.16 (MEND-NEG), pp.5812-13.

I’d say that there has been no difficulty in learning about Mohammed in the West for many years. By comparison, how many Islamic sources can give you detailed data (or even a short synopsis) of the lives of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, or Benjamin Disraeli? (I suspect the latter would not even be mentioned on principle.)

I have noticed that older reference books are less likely to sugarcoat the facts about the life of Mohammed and the rise of Islam than more recent ones. Just as they are more likely to place the various Crusades in their proper historical context. I.e., Islam launched a campaign of conquest in the 8th Century A.D.; In 1090, with their backs to the wall, the Europeans decided on a Hail Mary pass, a “spoiling attack” to take and hold Jerusalem to both secure the safety of pilgrims to the holy sites and give the Islamic armies a threat to their home territory they were compelled to honor force them to redeploy their assets defensively, taking them away from their offensives into southern Europe and the Balkans. It worked very well indeed; after several rounds over the next century, the Islamists were forced to negotiate a sort of peace. It didn’t stop them from trying to conquer the West, but it did slow them down a bit. (Today, they’re picking up speed again, for the same reason they did in the Eighth through Tenth Centuries; they sense that we are weak.)

Oh, and as for the idea of Muslims out-reproducing everyone else; a study done by WHO five years ago shows that the birth rates in most countries in the developed world plateaued in the 1990s, and are now slipping below the replacement rate, largely due to a combination of social pressures (the whole “ZPG” mentality rife in “enlightened elite” circles since the Seventies) and, simply put, higher taxes. (More taxes= less money to support children= falling birthrate= even smaller tax base in the next generation. Rome collapsed the same way- see Connections by James Burke.)
The punch line is that, also according to the WHO study, the same thing is happening in the Second and Third Worlds, as well, notably in Islamic countries- just slower. They estimated that Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iran, etc. would drop below the replacement level progressively in the next thirty years. That rather makes nonsense of this pair’s dream of “out-reproducing” everyone else and scoring a demographic victory.

Of course, if reality were ever to set in in the Islamic world, they’d really be in trouble- because they would finally have to come face-to-face with the incontrovertible facts of their culture’s total and complete failure to create anything. Except fanaticism, violence, misery, poverty, and death.

That’s not much to build a civilization on. Ask the Persians, sometime.

And then go tell them at Sparta.

clear ether

eon

Hitler had an entire SS unit of Muslims from bosnia. Presumably they were just preemptively upset with Israel?

http://www.srpska-mreza.com/library/facts/hanjar-book.html

The Islam of today is not the same Islam of even a few decades ago. There was a time, even in Damascus, or in Baghdad, or Cairo, that Suffism was considered the path to enlightenment, honored and revered…and today, the Wahabbis have perverted Islam to the extent that anyone other than a Wahabbi is considered a heretic. So yes, your point is indeed valid to a large degree

The lure of radical Islam has less to do with religion as it has to do with power…a power based on intimidation of the reluctant and death to heretics and unbelievers…the strong horse that drives more and more young people to radical Islam.

IN the eyes of many Moslems in the region, “peaceful” Islam over the past century has brought exactly what to most of the people in the region? More misery and exploitation by the West and the western-oriented Moslem elites and ruling classes in the region. Seeing an Israel bloom in the desert, for example, while having your own national leadership keeping you in poverty makes it easy for the radicals [and leadership as well] to cite Israel as being the root of all evil, keeping the oppressed masses oppressed, and the US as the great satan who keeps Israel alive…a wierd sort of logic, I admit, but one that has gained widespread, no, overwhelming cachet from Morrocco to Teheran.

Guys in Brooks Brothers suits and ties calmly having a discources about free speech causing terrorism should scare the bejeesus out of all of us, simply because here are apparently rational-looking people promulgating a lie, a big lie, not the bearded ulama, but guys like you and me, having a discourse that is sent out to millions…but a lie nonetheless.

But let’s get down to brass tacks. Free speech provokes Muslims because they believe in controlling it. They can’t win in the court of free public opinion so they kill to prevent it. It is no surprise that countries where respect for people freely speaking their mind without the worry of getting their heads chopped off are free, peaceable, democratic and prosperous, whereas where it isn’t respected, the countries are pretty much concentrated in the middle east and Arabic or, ahem, Egyptian.

I’ll take the former over the latter as I win two out of three.

He was a pedophile, for one. He was a child-raping, murdering, misogynistic cult leader and that twisted logic is his legacy.

Peace be upon him.

Still, that won’t stop organizations and countries dumping billions on them in hopes of ingratiation and showing them the wonder of democracy.

Keep the moderate dream alive.